The Phone Patch

After a hundred thousand tries, I finally managed to get into the so-called Pahrump Receiver last night for an entire hour.

I heard the 'testing' of the phone patch, including arties w6obb, phone call to Jim Watson ki6gu. Then whatever came after that, till my 'nickel' was up, and I was kicked out. Oh, and I even missed a few minutes of that as I had to visit 'the other room', something that couldn't be put off.

After another hundred thousand tries at refreshing the Pahrump Receiver page, I gave up in total frustration, and went to bed with a good book and Coast To Coast AM with George Noory, (whom I might add, is NEVER on an ego trip!). It was a lot more fun and relaxing.

What I did hear of the ‘Phone Patch’ was fascinating. Sorry I missed it the event in it’s entirety. And miss it all I did. Even today, at odd times, I tried to get into the Pahrump Receiver, in the hopes of catching at least part of the ‘playback’ with no more luck than I’d had last night.

However, my brain matter was not inactive as I was clicking away at the refresh button; here’s the direction my thoughts took…

-Does artie REALLY think he’s going to make friends and influence people to get involved in Amateur Radio with what has turned out to be just another version of the old ‘bait & switch’ bit??? (Put up a receiver, promote it heavily, then not let anyone listen to it?)

-Does he really think that folks are going to stick around a hobby very long, when all they get is frustrated and feel that their strings are being pulled as if they are puppets?

-WHY does a ‘hobby’ need to be promoted anyway? WHO said this needed to be done? Amateur Radio will die a natural death or it won’t, there’s nothing artie or any other HAM, can do about it. You are interested in a specific activity, or you are not; you seek it out, or you don’t. In all my life, I have NEVER seen anyone actively ‘promoting’ knitting, photography, mud wrestling, stamp collecting, patio gardening, or model railroads. Sure, they have shows, open to the public events, as does Amateur Radio, not one person out there trying to do it all.

Nope, I think the entire ‘build-up-the-hobby’ thing is just one more way for artie to manipulate the HAMS that hang out on 3.840 with him. Otherwise, he’d put his MONEY where his mouth is, and put the Pahrump Receiver on a server that could handle a huge amount of traffic, and just PAY for the bandwidth, which is something that might ACTUALLY promote the hobby! (Or at least promote the 3.840’s.)

Even giving artie the benefit of the doubt, he obviously did NOT think this one through, and I think he may be driving more people away, than attracting them.

As for me, I’m going to be listening to Gorge Noory tonight also. So I guess one thing artie will be accomplishing is to ‘up’ the ratings of C2C.