The Amateur Amateur: Fifteen Milliseconds of Fame

The Amateur Amateur: Fifteen Milliseconds of Fame

By Gary Hoffman, KB0H
Contributing Editor
December 20, 2003

My Amateur Radio book would have plenty of visual references, like little smiley-faced electrons dancing merrily down the feed line.

I was talking on the telephone with Chris--my brother and my Elmer. Now, I don't keep a log of these calls, but if I did, the message numbers would be in the triple digits by now. As usual, I was asking him about Amateur Radio theory rather than actual practice. I can find plenty of sources that tell me what to do, but very few that tell me why to do it. I am infinitely more comfortable knowing why I am doing something than I am doing it just because the manual says so.

As usual, the discussion with my brother was about antennas.

"What does a counterpoise do?" I asked.

"Your vertical antenna is like half of a dipole," he began. "The counterpoise acts as the missing half."

Chris kept on talking, but my mind had stopped right there. This used to happen to me in school a lot. I'd be following a lecture just fine, and then the instructor would say something that I didn't quite understand. I'd sit there ruminating over the statement, and by the time I'd figured it out the instructor had already covered several more topics.

"You see, the radiation resistance . . ."

I knew that term from one of the books I'd studied while upgrading. I couldn't quite remember what it meant. I knew that it was measured in ohms. Oh, right! I remember now.

". . . current return . . ." he was saying.

I realized he'd lost me again. Isn't there a book that explains all this in simple terms, I thought to myself. Something I can understand? I wished that Chris were here instead of 700 miles away. I needed him to draw pictures on a blackboard while he talked. I needed a visual reference point.

"And then you take the drag coefficient . . ."

I try to make things simple when I write about them in my column, I thought. Heck, I should probably write my own book about Amateur Radio. At least it would be understandable.

". . . square of the hypotenuse . . ."

You know, that might not be a bad idea, I thought. I can write coherent sentences. I think I could hold the reader's interest. I can draw, too. My ham radio book would have plenty of visual references. It would have lots of things like little smiley-faced electrons, dancing merrily down the feed line.

". . . party of the first part, herein known as the Plaintiff . . ."

The more I thought about it, the more enthusiastic I became. It should be a breeze to write about radio topics in simple, easy-to-understand terms, because that's the only way I understand them. I wouldn't have to "dumb down" the discussion, as my grasp of the material already is at the lowest, most basic level. During a discussion of standing wave ratio (SWR), for example, I would show my smiley-faced electrons rushing back down the feed line, yelling to their forward-rushing counterparts, "Turn around! The traffic is awful up ahead!"

"...but according to Socrates..."

This could work. This could be great! I already knew from e-mail responses to my column that there were plenty of amateur amateurs like myself out there, just thirsting for information. As I had, they found most of the material available seemed to be written for graduate engineering students, not for common folks like us. I could fill that gap! My book could become very popular. I might even make lots of money.

"...forms a bond with the chlorine atom..."

But wait. Before I could write such a book, I would have to thoroughly understand the topics. At present I barely understand them at all. I needed someone to explain all of the intricacies of radio to me, perhaps even collaborate with me in writing the book.

"Uh, Chris, could you repeat that, please?" I said lamely.

"Glitches in the System"

A few years ago I toyed with the idea of drawing an Amateur Radio related cartoon strip. Eventually I developed a strip about little critters that infiltrate radio equipment and create mayhem. I called it "Glitches in the System." The magazine for which I created the strip went belly up, however, and the cartoons never made it into print.

I recently unearthed the original six cartoons. As a holiday treat from me to you, I've included No 1.

Editor's note:ARRL member Gary Hoffman, KB0H, lives in Florissant, Missouri. He's been a ham since 1995. Hoffman says his column's name -- "The Amateur Amateur" -- suggests the explorations of a rank amateur, not those of an experienced or knowledgeable ham. His wife, Nancy, is N0NJ. Hoffman has a ham-related Web page. Readers are invited to contact the authorvia email.