What does the Ham radio generation of engineers have which we don't?

What does the Ham radio generation of the past have in terms of electronic experience that we don't?

I have heard and read that the past generations like during 60s, 70s when we have radios being quite popular, many people would learn a lot of electronics by themself by making amplifiers and doing some other rather minor experiments from todays standards. Now I don't know the details of this matter.

It seems that they had some insight or should I say intuition into electronics developed via these exercises (mainly analogue stuff) that we lack. Could you tell me how exactly were they better than us and precisely what skills and experience they had which made that generation rather superior to us? I have heard that e.g now people usually don't really understand how to combine lot of op-amps and other electronic components to create complex circuits. In the older days people knew that even before they would enter the college/university.

Is there some resource that could shed light on what the current and the recent generations of engineers lack which was present with the earlier engineers.

HAM's learnt how to optimize antenna performance by tuning the VSWR or RL, and balancing the impedance for good common mode noise rejection ( using a balun) and measured the loss of each connection as a critical opportunity for improvement ( with proper torque and cleanliness of contacts). Coax. Quality is never taken for granted and can make significant differences. Semi-solid coax being much better than most braids, and learning how to make good coaxial connections, is also an asset. Another key experience is learning the properties of different cores, chokes, and capacitor materials from any source.

Get some hands-on testing with a network analyzer, to reinforce what you have read about these effects and use a simple wire to measure changes in transfer function with various antenna designs. This may have to be done away from interfering sources when testing for example a 10m rhombic antenna and comparing with a dodecahedron antenna or a dipole.

It is mostly about a genuine interest in the subject, as opposed to going into engineering because there is a good career there.
Now it has been a long time since a callsign has automatically equated to 'good designer', but it is still noticeable that the good analogue guys have often held a ticket since before going to university.

What I think it gets you is the experience to have a better feel for when you need to get the math on and when a rule of thumb is good enough, together with a feel for when the numbers are reasonable.

Analogue especially is often very badly taught, I mean they teach the control theory and math, but things like the practical issues of layout and a feel for thermal and noise behavior is something that only comes with actually getting your hands dirty on a real project where the components are being run outside the region where they can be assumed ideal, and ideally where getting it wrong will dump a few hundred joules or so at 3KV somewhere unhealthy (It concentrates the mind).

The guys who took "A Handbook of filter synthesis" and "The radio designers handbook" to bed aged 13 back then are the same sorts who now submit patches to the Linux kernel and play with FPGAs at the same age, "Hacker" (In the original sense) has very much the same sorts of preoccupations, and in fact there is another group who often have call signs.

In both cases there is at least half a room given over to a home lab, sometimes with some very expensive gear, freedom to just play with the technology is a great teacher. In a home lab you have time to learn what does NOT work, and that is often at least as valuable, difficult to justify the lab time in school to do this.

73 de M0HCN.

I passed my Ham radio exam when I was 14 so perhaps I was a late starter!

The biggest difference I see with todays 'engineers', and I've interviewed many straight from University, is they are narrow minded. In years gone by, when the was a need to perform some function we would sit and think about the optimum solution, both in technical and finanial terms, before embarking on a design. Today I see engineers who say something can't be done if there isn't an IC made specifically for the job. Some of the problem is due to teaching methods, some is excessive 'health and safety' regulation but I think most is because of a lack of imagination. We (I'm including myself) have so many gadgets at our fingertips that we don't see a need to be inventive, someone else has already done it so why bother. Everybody now accepts the technology they are given instead of exploring new ideas for themselves.

At a component level, the move toward surface mounted components has no doubt stifled home construction by making things a lot harder to experiment with. Even humble resistors which may have been reused many times over in the past are basically one-time only parts now.

Brian.

The generation that reached maturity in the 50's and early 60's didn't have the information resources and large social community we have today. We had libraries, journals, and magazines. Magazines were very important. Our parents were often too busy re-building their lives after the interruption of WWII and the decade of the Great Depression to be other than loving parents to us. They did not get that involved in our lives.

The importance of modern social interactions, like being able to ask your question here, cannot be over emphasized. I grew up in Southern California, and that population exploded after the war. The growth statistics are staggering. My high school (student ages roughly 14 to 18 years) was one of the smaller high schools in our athletic conference. We had 4,000 students. The largest had over 10,000 students. My HS did not have a radio club. So far as I know, I was the only one who was interested in RC and made my own equipment. I flew with a couple of older men (my dad's age) who were ex-WWII pilots. They were good builders and flyers, but not much interested in the radio aspects. So, I relied on magazines and the occasional "expert" I met when we visited another flying field (i.e., Whittier Narrows). By comparison, if a teenager asks something about RC on any electronics forum today, there are dozens of helpers.

It seems that they had some insight or should I say intuition into electronics developed via these exercises (mainly analogue stuff) that we lack.

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Nope, no special insight. We were allowed to experiment and to fail. If I screwed up and lost an airplane, it was mowing lawns for $3 each (generous family), until I could buy another kit. Then, it took several weeks to build. Of course, the sky was much less crowded, and our airplanes flew almost as well with the radio turned off as when it was on.

Evolution has not made any major changes to humans in the past 60 years. You still need to compete, but some of the social rules have changed.

John

Ah, but those single use resistors are all kinds of CHEAP compared to the old carbon comp ones from years ago.
Hell I can build an entire small computer for well under a tenner in single quantities (Pic 32 on a little board with some leds and a few switches), a mixer I would have killed for a few years ago is now a few pounds, and as for frequency generation....

Cost is not the issue, if it ever was, but there have only ever been a tiny percentage of folk who were really interested in pursuing anything technical (Particularly anything mathematics heavy and where immediate success is not guaranteed), the guys with the licenses fitted that category (much as the guys with the commit privs on non trivial open source projects today fit the profile).

73 de M0HCN.

I get the impression that ham radio builders had greater familiarity with coils and transformers. I would see schematics containing a transformer, labelled only with a Stancor number. But no specs. To me they remained a mystery. I remember coils and transformers were listed in the Lafayette catalog. But they were expensive.

I scavenged several coils and transformers, but I could not figure out any correspondency which would match them to Stancor numbers. If I had built those projects I would have an idea what action coils and transformers performed.

I had an old Popular Mechanics handyman's encyclopedia which had an article about making your own power transformer. Watt ratings up to 2 kW. Several inches on each side. Full instructions, with tables of core sizes, wire sizes, etc.

It continues to be hard to understand coil and transformer dynamics. The trend seems to be to avoid using them. Yet they continue to be a vital component, since there is no substitute for them, in many situations.

I fully agree with BradtheRad about inductors. I've seen 'later generation' engineers trying to design RC bandpass filters at 12GHz and struggling to find 0.02pF capacitors and 1.045 Ohm resistors in catalogs. I still have a box of salvaged coils and transformers here, some dating back pre-WW2 and of course they all still work perfectly, maybe uniquely, they are the components that don't degrade over the years. I wouldn't use a VERY old power transformer in case the insulation had broken down but shellac coated copper wires are still perfect. Yes, component prices have tumbled but 'hobby' components, ones with real legs, are starting to be hard to find as mass production of SMD makes it less economical for manufacturers to produce them.

Brian.
GW6BWX