My Humble Opinion...


by Clark Jones, KI7TU

www.ki7tu.com


Copyright 2011 by Clark Jones.


I know that a lot of ham radio clubs have newsletters, and the editors are constantly appealing for articles. I've written articles for a number of publications over the years, and have had an amateur radio license for about 20 years now. So I've decided to write a few articles, though I can't promise to write a new column every month. Hopefully you'll at least find my words entertaining, and maybe even find a bit of wisdom in them.


I first got interested in electronics in the mid 1960s, and I first started working with computers a few weeks after Neal Armstrong's “One small step”. Over the years, I've learned a lot of little tidbits. Along the way, I worked for a year in an electronics factory as a technician. I got what at the time was a First Class Radiotelephone license, and worked for a while as a broadcast engineer in a TV station. I earned an engineering degree in Computing and Information Science (what today would be called Software Engineering). I spent 23 years working in the semiconductor industry, most of it for a company that built testers for computer chips.


Over the years, I've talked to a lot of people who were just getting started in building electronics as a hobby, or just getting started in ham radio. I always try to be helpful, but it seems like I always think of some things a couple of hours later that I should have told these folks. (OK, it also sometimes gets tiresome answering the same questions over and over.) So what did I do about it? I put together a website http://www.ki7tu.com that I encourage you to visit. There might be a few things that you'll find useful, but I expect that you'll want to take note of it to share with folks who are just getting started. A few of the highlights are a “tips” section where I share some hard-won wisdom, a “tools” section where I talk about the tools I find useful, and a “sources” section where I have info (including my honest evaluation) on vendors of parts and supplies that I've actually done business with. By the way, I do add things from time to time, so you might want to check back once in a while.