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#561
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D Schneider wrote: Pat Flannery wrote: Speaking of which, digital cameras have pretty much replaced Polaroids to the point where I couldn't even sell my old Spectra camera, so I tore it apart last night to have a peek at the innards. Did you take pictures? Nah, the digcam's batteries are dead. I was trying to locate a cutaway of it on the web so everyone could see just how complex it was inside, but no luck. They've got a version with a transparent top that lets you see the electronics: http://www.p3designwork.com/media/po...a_onyx_top.jpg But the optics of the viewfinder are the really complex part. Pat |
#562
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On Mon, 21 Mar 2005 12:27:24 -0800, "D Schneider" wrote:
In the US, the "Technician" class has been no-code for around 12 years. Most HF bands require Tech-Plus (equivalent to old Novice and Technician exams) for the 5 WPM, and I think they've lowered the WPM for General. Extra and Advanced classes have unsplit back together, IIRC, and there's still a high WPM involved, but then you're supposed to show you are special to get those tickets. According to http://www.arrl.org/FandES/ead/classes.html#extra, they don't call it Tech-plus anymore. But a Tech who passes a 5 wpm CW test has more HF privileges. After that, no more code tests. To upgrade from General to Extra requires a 50 question multiple-choice exam, for which the entire question/answer pools are available in advance. It's become CB radio for those with the slightest amount of reading retention. Too bad. Dale If the S.S.Minnow were shipwrecked today, the Professor wouldn't even know how to carve sex toys for Ginger from driftwood |
#563
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Dale wrote:
.... It's become CB radio for those with the slightest amount of reading retention. Too bad. Don't forget that licensing procedures for amateur radio operators did not develop in isolation. They were originally closely based on those for professional radio operators, especially of the shipboard variety. In most jurisdictions, the elements of the old-style amateur exam correspond perfectly with those of the old-style professional exams including Code, regulations, theory, hand-drawn diagrams, and an interview with the examiner. (The old-style professional exam included elements not on the amateur exam, including demonstration of the ability to perform minor repair and maintenance of shipboard radios and operation of a lifeboat radio.) The great fork seems to have occured about thirty years ago when jurisdictions began to actively look for ways to reduce unnecessary licensing procedures in all areas in an effort to reduce the burden on both users and regulatory agencies. This led to their questioning why licensing procedures for amateur radio operators should be closely based on those for professional radio operators. The cost of licensing professional radio operators could be justified by the safety implications. Not so for radio amateurs. On that note, the ARRL, in its many and varied publications, does a great job of conveying the history of amateur radio. It's unfortunate that it's a slightly distorted view because it rarely if ever seems to put amateur radio licensing in the context of licensing for other radio services. Whether this is deliberate or unintentional isn't clear to me. -- Dave Michelson |
#564
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Dave Michelson wrote:
The great fork seems to have occured about thirty years ago when jurisdictions began to actively look for ways to reduce unnecessary licensing procedures in all areas in an effort to reduce the burden on both users and regulatory agencies. This led to their questioning why licensing procedures for amateur radio operators should be closely based on those for professional radio operators. The cost of licensing professional radio operators could be justified by the safety implications. Not so for radio amateurs. Not at all. Licenses for professional radio operators have been effectively eliminated. There is no more First Phone, there is not even a General Radiotelephone Operator's license any longer. Any idiot can hang up a shingle and call himself a broadcast engineer, and many do. Anybody can take a job as a shipboard radio operator if they fill out the Restricted permit and send in their $35. On that note, the ARRL, in its many and varied publications, does a great job of conveying the history of amateur radio. It's unfortunate that it's a slightly distorted view because it rarely if ever seems to put amateur radio licensing in the context of licensing for other radio services. Whether this is deliberate or unintentional isn't clear to me. Amateur Radio is one of the few services left that actually licenses operators. In other services, station licenses still exist, but operators' licenses have either disappeared or become a useless formality. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." |
#565
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Scott Dorsey wrote:
Dave Michelson wrote: The great fork seems to have occured about thirty years ago when jurisdictions began to actively look for ways to reduce unnecessary licensing procedures in all areas in an effort to reduce the burden on both users and regulatory agencies. This led to their questioning why licensing procedures for amateur radio operators should be closely based on those for professional radio operators. The cost of licensing professional radio operators could be justified by the safety implications. Not so for radio amateurs. Not at all. Licenses for professional radio operators have been effectively eliminated.... Agreed, but my comments referred to the situation thirty years ago when the linkage between amateur and professional radio operator licensing procedures effectively ended. (In Canada, the change was quite dramatic.) The great simplification in licensing procedures for professional radio operators (maritime service) only occurred in the 1990's when Morse code was finally retired and there was no longer a legal requirement or justification for carrying a highly trained operator. -- Dave Michelson |
#566
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On Tue, 22 Mar 2005 15:18:45 GMT, Dave Michelson
wrote: The great fork seems to have occured about thirty years ago when jurisdictions began to actively look for ways to reduce unnecessary licensing procedures in all areas in an effort to reduce the burden on both users and regulatory agencies. ....This got rapidly accellerated when, following some blunders in attempting to enforce Part 95 on two presidential relatives, President Ford and that dip**** that replaced him arranged for the decision that the FCC wasn't authorised to charge fees or levy fines, and then neutered their budget so that they only had *two* field officers per state for regulatory issues. And all during the CB boom, which explains why by '81 they made licensing voluntary, and by '90 totally unnecessary. Rules still appplied, but according to my sources the FCC hasn't fined anyone for violations of Part 95 save for one or two uses of power, and even then only exceeding 1KW, and for altering rigs to go into CAP freqs below Channel 1 - what we used to call "Klan Channels" back in those days. Based on the current status of the FCC, that sort of neutering needs to happen again... OM -- "No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society - General George S. Patton, Jr |
#567
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On Sun, 13 Mar 2005 18:00:31 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote: Remember that story about the bats running into the F-117 because they couldn't see it with their sonar? And the camera that used a acoustical focusing system not being able to focus on it? Did they even have those back then? Yes, they did. We used the hardware to make an altimeter for the Gossamer Albatross. Polaroid makes it. However, I have to say that it's hard to shine a laser pointer at an SR-71 and see the dot. I was up in one of the sim labs one afternoon, when all the crews had gone home (summer hours), with visitors and I was pointing out various features of the research aircraft with my laser pointer. It worked fine for the X-31 and LSRA, with a nice red dot, but it didn't work for the SR-71. Of course, the SR-71 is matte black, so this wasn't exactly a surprise. Wasn't Sea Shadow a research vehicle, not a real operational ship? I don't think it was designed to go to war. Actually, I think it was just barely designed to go to sea. Mary -- Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer |
#568
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Mary Shafer wrote: Wasn't Sea Shadow a research vehicle, not a real operational ship? I don't think it was designed to go to war. Actually, I think it was just barely designed to go to sea. It was a experimental one-off like the XST Have Blue demonstrator, but it was supposed to be a concept prototype for something that would become operational at least partially based on the same design; in much the way the XST became the F-117. The whole Sea Shadow crew sat up in the cockpit at the front end of the ship, so you've got something that has a lot of apparently empty internal volume (with the diesel-electric motors taken into account, probably at least 75%) And I assume that something is supposed to go in there. I think it was troops that come out via a landing embarkation ramp up toward the bottom front; Lockheed implied it was surface-to-air missiles, but as has been pointed out that would require the ship to emit radar and guidance signals, and that would defeat the purpose of the stealth design. It's been implied in some quarters that some of the vessel's design features may have been incorporated into classified operational vessels of different types. Pat |
#569
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On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:11:01 -0600, Pat Flannery
wrote: Jorge R. Frank wrote: Keep in mind that DC-X was an experimental vehicle, done on the cheap, and an operational vehicle would likely have done a lot of things differently. Like redundant deployment methods, with simple pyro backup. Or, god forbid, five or six legs... :-) I never liked the concept even when I saw it in movies; the only time it makes sense to me is if you don't have a thick atmosphere to use in cushioning your descent. It may be "the way God and Robert Heinlein intended" a rocket ship to land, but it gives me the heebie-jeebies. The way the DC-X set itself on fire during that one landing didn't impress me either. It's not all that hot with a jet engine, either, even with atmosphere. The Ascender and other tail-sitter aircraft were dismal failures. Mary -- Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer |
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