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Old 01-12-2014, 07:43 PM   #17
NN5I
Carl, nn5i
 
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Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Tallahassee, FL
Posts: 1,441
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Many a person adopts a new hobby with an imperfect understanding; that's part of what makes it fun. Another thing that makes ham radio fun is that it isn't just for engineers and technicians. When I go to lunch with a bunch of radio hams, there'll usually be a retired engineer or two, some programmers, maybe a lawyer , a physician, and a history professor. Doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief -- oh, yes, not only police chiefs and Navy chiefs, but a retired Commander, too. Most don't know beans about electronics, but they're learning what they need to know to be pretty good hams. If they hadn't had to learn a bunch of answers to multiple-guess questions, they could have started earlier. If ham radio were just for EEs it wouldn't be much fun. What could I learn from people who know the same stuff I know? That'd be like trying to form my ideas by talking only with those who agree with me. Boring. Gotta learn from those who think I'm all wet.

Some of my friends are Democrats, even.

Incidentally, Herk, knowledge from the vacuum-tube era is quite useful. It's all the same kind of electricity, and drawing a load line on a set of transistor characteristics is done the same way as on a vacuum-tube chart. Besides, junction transistors act a lot like triode tubes, and FETs act a lot like pentodes. Electronics is fun, and I still remember my delight when I realized that capacitors and inductors behave exactly the same if you have the voltage and the current trade places. Magic! I felt smug at having already figured this out when it was explained in the very next chapter of the Circuit Analysis textbook under the chapter-head "duality".

Cheers!
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