Locally, we have about 2800 licensed hams in the county, of which I
would guess about 500 are at least semi-active, 100 regularly attend
various club meetings, 50 bother to build things, and perhaps 4 are
qualified to design anything useful.
Expressed in your characteristic "dry" manner... :>
But, illustrates the point, well. Yet, doesn't say how accessible
those "4" are nor where their interests lie. E.g., you would be
hard-pressed to get me to help you design an audio amp out of
discretes -- but, could probably keep me obsessed with trying to
cut power consumption by half a milliwatt on a battery powered
device! (and I'm a *helpful* soul ;-)
A lot also depends on how dense that population of "experts" is,
as well. E.g., our county is 9,200 sq mi with a population of just
over 1,000,000. So, 90 people / sq mile. *If* we have those 2800
hams, here (no idea), that would be one ham for every 4 sq mi. That
can make accessing that "expert" a bit problematic (I find learning
is usually faster "in person").
And, if the hams (and population, in general) are not evenly
distributed throughout the county, it only gets worse (potentially).
E.g., there are *no* electronic suppliers, here, within driving
distance. The closest possible (overpriced) retailer is clear across
town (and would never have the types of components that I am
interested in).
While it's possible to get some
help with design and construction from ham radio, it really depends on
whom you contact.
This is the age of specialization.
Exactly! The days of being able to keep a drawer full of transistors,
diodes, resistors, etc. and hack together an amplifier -- or a logic
gate (!) -- are long behind us. Sure, you can still do it, but there
is no point. I can recall building 8 digit counters out of discretes
with nixie displays... would I bother wasting my time on that *now*??
(though I *have* been sorely tempted to build a Difference Engine).
I can design and advise on some
aspects of RF and repair. In other areas, I'm clueless. You would do
best by finding a forum, blog, newsgroup, or mailing list that covers
the specific area that you're interested in asking questions. Don't
Agreed. ------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
be fooled by the names or lack of traffic. There are often forums
where most of the answers are by email from those that just don't want
their names and advice subject to public scrutiny. For example, I've
found that the LEAST useful forum for solving Apple computer related
problems is Apple's own forums. Just post your question and see what
happens. If you get a dozen one-line useless bad guesses, move on.
As always, the quality of the answers depend heavily on the quality of
the question. Without a clue as the nature of the question, vague
answers, like this one, will be epidemic.
Wear rubber soled shoes, remove all jewelry, keep one hand in your
pocket and *play*! It's not *chemistry* where you have to worry
about losing eyebrows or other body parts when you make a mistake :>
All you have to lose is a little *money*!
(and, depending on what you are playing with, many devices nowadays
can take a LOT of abuse -- short circuit protection, etc. -- so you
don't have to worry about replacing components every two ohnoseconds!)
