<snip>
That's the beauty of today's jelly-bean parts. People say that our youth
doesn't have the available resources to build electronics projects.
That's nonsense.
<snip>
Well, in some ways it is better; in others worse. I used to be able
to just go to any of several local stores and persuse through table
after table of parts and components in a warehouse kind of place; or
go through Radio Shack (even before Tandy bought them) and see most of
the entire store with parts; and so on. I seem to recall at least two
or three RS stores in the city area (good part sources), an Allied
Radio electronics warehouse store with a huge resource I could go
through by hand; a United Radio store with parts everywhere; and two
other "surplus" electronics stores I would frequent.
ALL (every single one) of these are essentially gone. The RS stores
are no longer a resource to speak of, even though there are more of
them now. There is a Norvac Electronics store here. And it has parts
-- but high priced "replacement brand" (read: NTE) parts for the
larger part of it. Some interesting things once in a while.
This, in a city metro area with now 1.5 million people.
Of course, there are really great new options, too. I would never
have been able to afford quality boards made for 1, 2, or 4 off kinds
of things. My selection of parts are fantastic, and so on. So many
more things are sincerely possible to consider realistically doing
than there is time for, as a hobbyist with family pressures and a
profoundly autistic child can manage.
However, I'm finding that transistors the size of salt grains without
the possibility of any markings (unless they placed the letters on
them pixel-atom by pixel-atom), the need for more expensive soldering
tools and magnifiers (as I age), and the relative higher difficulties
of actually finding and using parts I can put on a protoboard meaning
that I really need those board houses more.
Some of it, though, at least for young kids, is that access to those
who know a little about electronics (and I'm not talking about
experts, just folks with some "playing around" experience who are
there when a kid has a simple question coming to mind) seems to be in
a diminishing ratio. There are more folks in the business, but fewer
neighbors to ask, it seems. Certainly, when I was growing up there
were many with at least some military experience in electronics you'd
meet and others, too. I used to also have several neighbors in an
easy 4-5 mile bicycle riding radius of me working on building their
own telescopes. Also, into rocketry. And so on. I can't say I know
where any of that is going on within many more miles of here, now. If
at all. (I've lived in the same community my entire life.)
On the other hand, there is the internet, too. So that's to the good
side of this.
Both parents working, or one working two jobs, the intrusion of TV and
gaming systems into our time, the hours applied per individual adult
and child for hobby learning has diminished, I suspect. People don't
build their own barns, replace their own rooftops, repair their own
plumbing or lines coming into the house, etc. They hire it, if they
can. A transition from broad to specialized knowledge, a dependance
upon a surrounding supports in society, etc.
I used to know lots and lots of neighbors by the hobbies they were
into, in fact. "Oh. That's Joe. He's really into model planes a
lot." That kind of thing. Now, often when I ask a parent or adult I
know, "What kind of hobbies do you like to do?" I get a blank stare,
much more often than I ever used to.
Jon
Well, actually, with 16
