Bob Sutton wrote:
> I checked the calender to make sure it was not 01 April. This posting would
> have been more appropriate on that date ...
>
It may have been sent as a joke, but perhaps it was not. Both myself and
Leif (SM5BSZ) gave it some attention. Perhaps we were both fooled, but
perhaps you are mistaken too.
I've come across a lot of hams in my time who *genuinely* believe they
have some magic method which makes a great antenna, super sensitive
receiver or some other such thing. As an scientist/engineer, I often
laugh to myself about their ideas, but I know they genuinely believe them.
At a club I used to belong to, someone came along one night with this
loft antenna design, which needed wires of this length going at this
angle, and wires of another length at some other angle. It just looked
like a random mess to me. His mate had shown him the antenna, so he
decided to build one, worked some DX, so was convinced it was a great
antenna.
When I asked the basis of it, he had not a clue. Nobody had modeled it,
or done anything. I suspect his mate just strung a wire around to fit
his loft space, found it worked and believed it was the best antenna going.
The guy at my local club managed to convince other hams to take careful
note of all these critical dimensions and angles. How many built them I
don't know.
As much as I might laugh at some of these ideas, I find them more
interesting than the ham who
* Goes to a retailer and buy the latest all-signing, all-dancing gear on
a credit card
* Gets the shop to put the connectors on the cable for them, as they
can't solder.
PS
For what it is worth, when I was a lot younger I had this idea to make
free electricity. One had a motor and dynamo (generator) connected via a
belt. One powered the motor up, which turned the generator, which made
enough power to power the motor and some extra you could use. Once it
was started, it kept going.
I was convinced it would work! I'm not sure how old I was when I had
this idea, but I know I would have known it was fundamentally flawed by
the age of 16. Antennas are a lot more complex to understand properly
than the simple generator/motor idea of mine.
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