"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"
" The new bosses want to turn RadioShack into a hipper, more mainstream place for “mobility” — which is what they insist on calling the cell phone market. (In an interview, RadioShack’s marketing chief used the word mobility an average of once every 105 seconds.) Selling phones is central to the new RadioShack. And so far, it seems to be working. Per-store sales are up, and corporate profits jumped 26 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009."The article identifies 'a small subculture of RadioShack nostalgics' and their feelings of betrayal and loss. The author asserts that
"in a single generation, the American who built, repaired, and tinkered with technology has evolved into an entirely new species: the American who prefers to slip that technology out of his pocket and show off its killer apps. Once, we were makers. Now most of us are users."
"You can copy 25 wpm in three weeks, with just 15 min a day practice. Start at 35 and work down... You listen, and listen some more. Use the W1AW practice run that starts at 35 wpm. After a few weeks, 25 wpm will sound slow, and you should be able to write the characters."Ron on the CW list describing how he broke through his own plateau. Extreme Farnsworth.
""Although approximately one million Americans operated ham radios in the course of the 20th century, very little has been written about this thriving technical culture in our midst. Kristen Haring offers a deeply sympathetic history of this under-appreciated technical community and their role in contributing to American advances in science and technology, especially the electronics industry. In the process she reveals how technical tinkering has defined manhood in the United States and has powerfully constituted 'technical identities' with often utopian, even, at times, revolutionary, notions about the social uses of technology."
—Susan Douglas, Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies, University of Michigan, and author of "Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination"
"A paddle and speed key in the hand of someone who has no feel for Morse sounds pretty ugly when they start sending with no spaces or extra dots and dashes. Kind of like running a rotary floor buffer the first time!"David argues "with a straight key - especially on the lower frequencies - 1.8, 3,5 and 7.0 MHz - you can customize your sending to match the conditions. Sometimes sending "fatter" dashes gets the message through."
"...do yourself a favor, and learn with a straight key. Learning to be proficient in sending and receiving "good" code, is not magic. It takes a little dedication, and lots of practice on a regular basis. Check out youtube and you will see more than one "cw op" who thinks he is the cat's meow on a bug or paddle, little does he know that what he is sending is considered "poop fist" material. By learning slowly with a hand key, you will learn proper spacing between characters and words. When you get to the point where you can set the gap on your hand key at a "hairs width" and send with it perfectly at 15 to 20 wpm, you might then give a paddle a try."
"...there are pieces of the KXB3080 that can be installed during the initial build so you do not have to remove any more than 2 toroids. At one time, I created a "cheat-sheet" telling a couple of builders how to do it - I can try to find that email if you would like to try. I would only recommend doing that to an expert and confident builder. OTOH, an expert and confident builder would have no problem removing components from the PC board without damaging the board or burning the relay cases either.Maybe this impresses me so much because I never was lucky enough to have an Elmer when I started out!
The KXB3080 is difficult to install because of the small space available in the KX1, and the instructions must be followed exactly, particularly the LPF board - if not done exactly like the instructions, it will interfere with the tuner."
