Manfred, I whole hardily agree. I've made some stuff that I shouldn't, that
made a great noise, never to damage or destroy property, just the solitude
of the area. Then again we grew up for the most part in the backwoods of
north Georgia. I would leave the house at 10 or 12 years old with a 22 rifle
and my mother would ask me if I was going to be home for lunch; If not she
would pack me a sandwich. Off to my cousins house I would go to pick them up
and we would be gone until dark....we had better be home before dark. HV?
Yea it sticks to you like really good glue (and special effects too),
luckily the floor was close enough to knock the controls out of my
hands....I was 25 then and working on a 3 phase motor reverser. Broke
fingers, more stiches than I can count (and removed most of them myself),
knots on the head. Oh the good life, not boring, not sheltered, my big
brother was my big brother not the government. Hell there were 6 of us
cousins that were the same age almost and if a week came that one of us was
not trying to kill the other it was not the norm.
Still planning my FIRST legal limit amplifier !!!!! Grin
Ken
N4zed
-----Original Message-----
From: Amps [mailto:amps-bounces@contesting.com] On Behalf Of Manfred
Mornhinweg
Sent: Sunday, January 08, 2017 10:11 AM
To: amps@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] Decline of homebrewing?
Bill,
> Today those of us look back at what we did and would not want our own
> children do the same.
And I think that this is a mistake. Teh current generation of children, in
many parts of the world, is growing up excessively sheltered. So they live a
far more boring childhood than we did. With far less risk of suffering
injuries, of course, but deprived of many experiences we had.
It is my opinion that it's better to live a full life, trying and doing
everything, even when that entails some added risks, and that this principle
should even be applied to children. Of course adequate guidance and
instruction is desirable, but locking up our kids in a golden cage so that
they can't injure themselves doesn't do them any good.
For the same reason I oppose things like "No user serviceable parts inside"
printed on almost every device you can buy; special screw heads intended to
make it impossible to remove those screws; mandatory use of swim wests;
mandatory presence of life guards at every beach; schools avoiding practical
activities in chemistry labs, physics labs, workshops, etc, to prevent
accidents; children being driven right to the school door even when they
could walk or bike or take a bus; And of course I fully support young people
getting into hands-on electronics, even when that involves high voltage.
> I also built my own rocket engines which was common back then.
So did I.
> Sugar and potassium nitrate was the only ingredients but the process
> was a bit risky.
I started making black powder and slowing it down with sawdust, but then
progressed to making colloidal nitrocellulose. Much better, and cleaner.
Also made some nitroglycerine, in tiny amounts; not for rockets, but for
pranks. I never had any accident in all those experiments, and never caused
any significant damage, except for small craters in the ground,
disintegrated logs of firewood, and so on. And several rockets that blew up
instead of flying, but they were homemade and cheap. I was a good kid, not a
destructive one. Even the pranks were funny, not damaging.
> Nothing keeps a kid from doing the same.
Exactly. There is a strong drive to do such things. Repressing it can bring
the kids to worse actions.
> So where do we draw the line?
That's up to the parents, so a kid's mileage will vary, according to what
his parents think. I think that the golden rule is to bring the kids to a
point where they are able to decide themselves what's safe enough, and
what's not, and which calculated risks to take. The sooner that happens, the
better.
Manfred
========================
Visit my hobby homepage!
http://ludens.cl
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