As Dennis Miller would say... "I don't want to get off on a rant here,
but..."
Tony King - W4ZT wrote:
>
> Gentlemen, if you can't offer sincere help or an opinion that's
> relevant or that doesn't reflect negatively on your upbringing, it
> might be better to leave it alone.
And how exactly is bringing Art's supposedly bad "upbringing" into the
conversation sincere help or an opinion that's relevant? I call foul on
your supposed moral high-ground on that one.
He didn't exactly say, "Your mother is a hamster and your father smells
of elderberries," so I'm not sure what you're all up in arms about.
(With apologies to Monty Python.)
Just so we know where you stand on the issue: I notice that your
callsign is a 4-land call -- do you have an un-toned repeater in SERA
territory? (Just wondering if you have a dog in this fight.) I'm just
curious.
Art's opinion is correct in a lot of people's eyes -- CTCSS, a 1970's
technology that's well-proven and works -- shouldn't be so hard to get
hams to use 30 years after it was in fairly wide use in the commercial
world. And older hams *are* typically the people too lazy to implement
it, for all their talk of "I remember when I built my own radio, walking
uphill in the snow, both ways."
His comments about "old farts" is probably technically accurate. A
large percentage of older hams (too large) will invite you over for an
"807" and talk mighty talk about "the old days of radio" but they won't
take ten minutes to solder a $30 tone board into their old [insert old
2m rig here]. And they're uneducated and lazy about learning the real
issues surrounding the operation of a modern repeater at a high-RF site.
For this behaviour, it's approprate they get a few public raspberries.
Using the endearing term, "Old Fart" works.
"How do you convince people to use this OLD technology if even the
coordination powers that be back off from forcing the issue?" Maybe
that's how he could have phrased it for a lively discussion.
We all know this is a problem facing many of us in densely populated
areas -- this is Repeater-Builder, for goodness sakes. We've all seen
it. Art was just frustrated with the mentality and voiced it. Many
people are.
I found the information he provided useful in that I didn't know SERA
was talking about making a change in their policy, and I didn't think
SERA would back down on that one if they were seriously considering it.
That's unfortunate if they did. They're a big powerful organization and
can use that power for good or evil or nothing. In this case, it sounds
like they might have opted for the third option. Because they're so
large, a lot of other coordinating bodies follow suit on issues like
this one. Perhaps that was the unwritten frustration in Art's message.
I don't know.
I'm NOT saying that it was for the reasons that Art surmises though...
that's his OPINION.
Art's joking comments about marrying cousins is an old enough joke my
grandfather at age 87 knows about it, so I wouldn't take it too literally.
Requiring everyone to be politically correct and the associated
groupthink is double-plus bad. (With apologies to Orwell.) Don't worry
Art, having a personal opinion about something and being allowed to
discuss it will come back into vogue someday, hopefully.
Requiring CTCSS on the other hand, is good practice. Colorado has
required it now for all new coordinations for quite some time now.
There's no restriction on whether or not you can turn it off if you feel
like it, but you're required to have it available on your system. If
you experience interference that using your CTCSS access can clear up,
and complain -- well, then it's "shame on you". And there's at least a
recourse for the coordination folks to point at the rules and say,
"You're choosing to operate outside your coordination." That's smart.
Waiting for people to do it on their own is dumb, because it makes the
coordination body have to work extra hard when they complain about
co-channel and adjacent-channel interference, or worse -- have problems
with mixing at sites with multiple transmitters and haven't bothered to
learn enough about mixing to deal with the problem themselves.
Nate WY0X
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Repeater-Builder/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
