"Geoffrey S. Mendelson" wrote:

William Sommerwerck wrote:
Amateur radio has largely become a plug 'n play hobby. Hams still build
antennas, and sometimes high-power finals, but other than small projects and
accessories, they mostly buy things. Don't expect to walk into a shack and
find a home-brew receiver these days.

That's true. But you will find home brew (or at least kit) QRP rigs,
audio and microphone amps, and similar items.

Except in the UK, where one of the requirments for getting their "foundation"
license is to have built something.

One of the purposes in licensing amateur radio operators was to build a base
of people with both theoretical and practical knowledge of electronics. It's
not clear that it still does this.

It still does. Like everyone who uses a computer, most people could never
program their way out of a paper bag, there is a large population of hams
who can't design or build anything. But there is still a small percentage,
say 10% that do. In the US, that's about 60,000 or so. Enough that David
should not have trouble finding one.

The main objective of ham radio was to have a pool of radio operators
ready in case of an emergency. In 1920 that meant being able to send and
receive Morse code. In 2011, that means knowing how to set up and operate an
FM two way radio, and how to take and pass messages correctly with little
or no instuctions and not panicing.


More like 1975, not 2011 and this isn't Israel.

There are plenty of commercial FM radios around, and all the county
radios are digital. The only amateur related emergency gear is the
club's HF station, near the county offices. They don't have a spare
tower, or antennas that could be erected in a couple hours and there is
no way in hell they could put up a replacement commercial digital radio
base station or cell phone tower, even if they had months.


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a Band-Aid™ on it, because it's
Teflon coated.