Hams in Space!

starting Ihal monlh, and tour more in
me work s, I had more to do lhan get
back 10 " How are you?" BBS mes­
"....
How am I? Don'I ask. I already covered
lhat a few months back in detail.
I'm fine , thank you . Having been diel­
Ing lately, I'm even less tolerant ol lools
and lhetr blalher aboul no-code than
usual . Not one single new argument
pro orcon, has surfaced in the 32 years
I've been championing a no-code h­
cense. Phooey.
Gelling back to BBSs, I prefer to
spend my time reading (for my education),
writing (10 educate others) and
gelling things done toward my goals in
the music, educational. publishing and
ham fields. All work? Nah. I do gel oul
skiing. diving, watch some TV, catch a
lew movies, see some plays, and go 10
some concerts. Not bad for living in lhe
mounlains at New Hampshire, eh?
Old-timers have lollowed me from
me 73 start in October 1960 in a lillie
two-room oHice over a Brooklyn grocery
store Even older-timers rem ind
me of my firsl ham magazine back in
1951 , which I started from Cleveland,
ooe. while working as a TV director.
I've been giving adVice for most 01
tbese 40 years . A few people have taken
II and done well . ..gening into tne
hundreds 01 mIllions. Some hava ignored
it and Iosl ... some have even
lost bllll()flS ignOflng my advice. I don't
think anyone has ever Iosl. by paying
anentlOl'lto my predic1ions.
Neg'live VIMI
Does your lalth In amateur radio
have the vitalily to face unpleasant
Iruths about your hobby? Or do you
prefar the usual Whitewash, every­
Ihing-is·actually·peachy approach in
your reading?
I get a few letters grumbling about
my gloom and doom observations. It
seems 10 escape these oeqeuve-cnenled
folk (of which we have a seem­
Ingly endless supply in amateur radiO)
thaI my glooms are always accompanied
by creat ,ve, constructive soIulions
to our problems. I believe in facing our
problems and solving mem. That's the
only way lhey're goi ng 10 go away. I'm
soIuI~len tad , How aboul you?
On a recenl skiing trip 10 northern
Vermont I fmally had enough time to
myself to get some work done. First , I
pla nned a complete reorganizatl()fl of
the report mg sys tem lor the many
projects I' ve gol going
Then I caught up with a cubit SlaCk 01
magaz'nes I'd brought along. I I,ke to
k&&P up w,lh technology. I never know
whe n I'll run across something which I
can use. So I read sceoutc American ,
Omm, DIscover , Fortune, Success ,
Technology Review, Kappan , Inc"
etc.. marking ideas of value as I go .
The magazines read, I turned to a
staCk of bookS. I always take along
more than I can possibly read. The last
lime I went on a reading binge like Ihis
wa s a year ago when I was on a SCuba
diving cruise wilh ChUCk KOll We
dove all day and I read the resl of Ihe
t,me. ThiS time I skied mosl 01lhe day
and read the rest 01the time.
Now there you go, being negative
again, grousing aboul old Wayne wandering
oH abou1 this and that. Yes , I do,
it's one of my few charms. But wait'll
you lind out what 1lucked Into, bookwise!
One 01 'em explained a 101 to
me . . . and you should find itlnt9festing,
lOO.
The boolo; was " How 10 Work the
CompetiliOn into the Ground and Have
Fun DoIng It,"
by John Molloy, the
chap who wrote " Dress lor Success"
and " Live for Success," both of which I
enjoyed. This lillie old $10 paperbaCk
was great! Full 01 ideas.
But the part that was of the moSl
inlerest to me had 10 do with creativity.
I'm always inlerested in Ihis subject
and how it can be taughl. Well,John
does a tot of consulting and one of his
projecls was to try and lind out how
creative people diller from others. And
why,
Being an almost pathologically creative
person .. .n's more of a curse
than a gift . .. 1wanted to hnd out how
Ihis happened to me. John interviewed
a bunch of oulstandingly creative people
, Irying to lind out what they had in
common. His find ings were surpns­
109 ., and dISCOUraging.
I found them d;SQJUraging because I
was hoping creativity mighl be more
teachable Entrepreneurs need creativity
in heaps 10 surmount the coostant
tIow 01 serious problems lhey
face. America needs creatIVity if it's
going to regain its Iosl. high teen industnes.
We're lamous for invent,ng new
technologies and then watching the
Japanese deVelop the orectcer applic
atio ns , running creative circ les
around us .
We invented tape recording, and
they smothered us in innovative tape
recorders. We invented digital wetcnee,
and Ihey buried us in innovative
watchss. We're desoeretew hurting for
creativity in our industrial research
labs.
Look at how we're hurting in amateur
radio for the lack 01 creativity. We
shou ld be years ahead ctwnere we are
in spread spectrum development, in
h igh speed d igilal communlca ­
II()IlS. . . including nol only words, but
graphics and music. We 've deplorably
leI ou r hobby and our country down.
We're far busier lighting over Ihal antoq
ue communicalions curiOs.ty, the
Morse code, than in trying to move
ahead. Morse Is fun, but it's aboul as
relevanl to communications today as
lhe eat's whisker and a chunk of galena.
II' s for people who are holdlOg desperalely
onto me past because Ihey
have no Vision of the future.
I couldn't help but lake another
Swipe at the old-timers who have dedi·
caled their lives to trying to bury ama,
tour radio . .. along with lhemselves.
Now, baCk 10 what John found oul
about creativily. We're talking creativi·
ty in business and engineering, not
artists and poets. Firsl, he lound thaI
creative people tended to be highly In·
telligent. Second, Ihey were hard and
elleclive workers. John says, " In lad
many work all thE>lime. They never lurn
011. They take their work with Ihem
wherever they go. "
Hmmm, thet
sounds familiar! Hey, that's me, with
my laplop computer in lIle baCk seat 01
my van.
" They create by bringing order to
seemi ng disorder. They're always
thinking , relhinking, reviewing , and reordering.
" II's the ok! 5~ inspiraliOn
and 95~ perspiration lormula aspoused
by Edison.
The lhird characteristic 01 crealive
people is a positive armuoe. on, they
are as aware of lhe problems as anyone,
butlhey're optimislic aboul them.
When I get a setter from a reader saying
he cceen't always a9r&& w,Ih my ecrtcrials,
l know he's not a creew e person.
A creative person reads my editorials
and comes up with even better scmlions
to problems. He jusl doesn'llhink
in necauve terms.
When I gel a really negative letter I
leel sorry for the writer. I know he's that
way about everything and with everyone.
He isn't selecting me to dump on,
I'm just one more What a horrible person
to have tOWOrk or live with!
MOllOy found thaI creative people
were loners as ch ildren, They tend 10
march to their own drum and 10 heel<
with conformity . " Pragmatic l'lOf'ICOOo
formists," Molloy calls 'em . Mosl stiH
dress the way they want and don'l care
what OIhers lhink. As kicls they dietn'l
have many friends ...dldn't need 'em.
I tned smok ing and dldn'l llke it, so I
never smoked. I tned drinkIng while I
was in the Navy. When I noticed that
alcohol made me stupid, I stopped. I
Iried pot and LSD a couple times.
Nope, not for me. 1tested lhose drugs
and decided conformity wasn 't wor1h it
tome.
Creative peop-le Jove solving problems,
Maybe mat's why I can't pass up
a crossword puzzle or a cryptogram.
And I truly enjoy helping people solve
problems. That's why I read over a
hundred magazines a month and
books by lhe dozen . , .1gel ideas from
them which eventually cliCk into p-Iace
to help sotve a problem.lenjoymentoring
college students,
Well, hooray for me, Yeah, I $UPpose.
But understanding that negativeness
prevents people from betng creative
is worlh understanding ...
parlicularty if you are an employer _..
or if you 're looking tor breakthroughs in
amateur radio. Employers need creative
problem solvers, not negatIve
thinkers. And they get nard workers as
a bonus.
Wilh the future obviOusly going electron
ic, we need all 01 the creative peeple
we can find. And we need 10 anraet
'em 10 amateur radio, where they'll be
able to help both us and our country. If
we let the Morse coders keep us in the
193Os, we're signing a dealh warrant
for the hobby . .. and we could be helping
to consign our counlry 10 second
place , ..or even thi rd, behind Europe.
Yes, 1 know all about the new nocode
Tech thing. I also hear Ihe oldtimers'
necks creaking as they warn Of
dire consequences. Meanwhile, the
ham induslry-in a burst 01 euphoriais
again expecting the money tree to
start growing. Like when we got Novice
Enhancement Remember that beaut?
Being pragmalic, I wamed that all
we'd done is remove a small roadblock.
We still hadn'l put up any road
signs. The no--code deal is enomer
block gone. We Slill have 10 go out and
eovertlse or the kids aren 'l going 10
even know our road ex ists. Has the
industry learned yel? Are you kidding?
I'll be reading every ham club
newslener t can get 10 see if one ham
dUbanywhere hascome up with a p0sitive
program 10 plomole lhe hobby 10
kids and get the parade started.
II 1A sked You ...
Suppose we 're having a contad and
I asked you to tell me about a lime
when you really had a lot of fun with
amateur radio. What would you tell
me? A question uke that could keep me
go ing for days. How about you? I don't
suppose there's any chance you'd
lake a few minutes and write , since I
haven't run into you on Ihe air recently?
Ham radiO has provided me with a
couple lifetimes of lun. ThaI's one of
the main reasons I got Sf1CIoto;ered inlo
publishing 73. It's got something to do
with wanting 10 share the things I've
enjoyed with as many people as posst.
bIe. In my CD Review magazine I'm
having lun inlrooUCing the readers to
music they mighl oth erwise have
missed.
When I got OUI Of the Navy after
World Misunderstanding II, It didn't
lake me lon g to build an all-band
(8 13 s) kilowall rig. Then I tucked Inl0 a
beaut of a 75m kllowall rig (203Zs1. I
had two complete kW sretcoe. one
with an SX·26 Haflicrafters receiver,
the other with a NatiOnaI100A.
I had my ham shaCk set up in the
basement 01my Iralernity house at college,
with antennas all over the place.
The lun was 10 get into a round lable on
75m and lhen go down to 20m and
make a OX contact and rebroadcast
hiS signal on 75m to the round table. In
this way we were able to work African,
European and Asian OX slations into
our round table. The net could hear the
OX chap through my 75m rig and he
could hear the netthrougtl my 20m rig.
That was a ball!
Yes, 01 course I got a pin k licket from
an FCC monitoring staliOn. I just sen1
'em a copy 01 the letter I'd gotten from
the FCC in Washington saying this
kind of operation waslegal. Didn't hear
anymore.
So teu meabout some of the exciting
things you 've done. II you get meescnad
too, I might share your story wilh the
73 readers .. . or in a publication to
help gat NOViCes more involved with
the hobby, Remember, when you're a
silent key, about alilhat will live on aher
you is what you get published.
And it's really fun when your friends
read your slories and feel they know
someone famous. Or when someone
you contact on the air has read your
Slories and recognizes your call.
1 can handle anything I can read ,
!rom old nolebook paper 10 a computer
printout, bul 01 course it's easiesl tor
me if you Include a floppy disk, III
62 73 Amateur RadiO Today • March, 1991