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NB: I realize you may have some eyesight issues, so I've tried to make the Talk page as easy as possible to navigate. Cheers - [[User:LuckyLouie|LuckyLouie]] ([[User talk:LuckyLouie|talk]]) 17:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
NB: I realize you may have some eyesight issues, so I've tried to make the Talk page as easy as possible to navigate. Cheers - [[User:LuckyLouie|LuckyLouie]] ([[User talk:LuckyLouie|talk]]) 17:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
:Hello again Louie, appreciate the layout. I think we are talking from the same page here now, and the proposal to change the paragraph is a major step in the right direstion, but i`m runnig out of gas here waiting at these traffic lights on the Interstate junction of your community. I guess I`ll take my chances and back up the old R.V. across the central reservation and go back down the I95 to Daytona. It`s warmer there, and who knows, I might go visit the snow birds on the white sands of Clearwater on the west coast of orange county. After some chow I`ll leave a parcel here on the sidewalk. If someone from the community wants to venture out and pick through the pieces, there may be some useful stuff, maybe not, we`ll see.
===Thought for the day===
:This section should be at the start of your article really, when you get up in the morning, switch on the radio, check your cell phone for texts, spend a while on the Nintendo DSi, shuffle about a bit on your Wii in front of your Satellite enabled TV. Perhaps then you might switch on the Wireless note book to check emails. On your way out you`ll reach for the wireless fob to open the garage, go for the one that unlocks the automoble, switch on the radio for traffice information, poke the screen on the Sat Nav with your finger. If it wasn`t for the "Hams" (with the heavy "ham fisted" hands on those morse keys all those years ago), you wouldn`t be able to do diddley squat when you wake up to another new technological day. Like Arnie, "I`ll be back" this way soon after I`ve warmed up, and gassed up again. (...- .-) (end of work). (-.. .) (-- ----- ..-. . .--) (--.- .-. -) ( . . ) 73s [[User:Francis E Williams|Francis E Williams]] ([[User talk:Francis E Williams|talk]]) 10:07, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Revision as of 10:07, 21 January 2011

Template:Outline of knowledge coverage

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Polarity Modulation

Would someone add a discussion of this subject?

This is a simple form of digital radio modulation, also known as BPSK. Try looking up BPSK, phase-shift keying, digital communications, digital radio, and so forth.

98.67.111.148 (talk) 14:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Tesla Nonsense

"It's interesting to note that Marconi's first successful test was using a Tesla coil".

This is nonsense. Marconi's early tests used a simple induction coil known as a Ruhmkorff coil. Nothing remotely to do with Tesla. I have removed this spurious claim Gutta Percha (talk)

Please help edit the appearance of a name

Please help edit the appearance of the name Alexander Stepanovich Popov in the table in the upper right-hand corner of this article. As it stand now, this name appears as
Alexander Stepanovich
Popov
Hence, it is made to appear as the name of two men: one named "Alexander Stepanovich", and the other simply named "Popov".
Such things are not unknown, since there have been many people who have gone by one name, such as Gandhi, Lenin, Peter, Peter (the Great), Charlemagne, Arthur, El Cid ("the Cid"), and thousands of others are commonly referred to by just their surnames or given names: Marconi, Einstein, Galileo, Newton, Leibnitz, Beethoven, Mozart, Gauss, Euler, Goethe, Schiller, Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Columbus, Magellan, Voltaire, Watt, Spock, Hitler, Stalin, etc.98.67.111.148 (talk) 14:25, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We get the idea. No need to make the list any longer or link the names. I've added commas in the infobox. That may help clarify the listing until someone comes along who knows a better way to do it. Hertz1888 (talk) 15:45, 25 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Edit request from Janicekaye, 29 July 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} Hi...I would like the article to make it clear that Reginald Fessenden was Canadian. Janicekaye (talk) 16:16, 29 July 2010 (UTC) Janicekaye (talk) 16:16, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

None of the others (Marconi, Tesla, Popov, etc.) in this article are identified by nationality. Is there any special reason Fessenden should be an exception? - LuckyLouie (talk) 17:30, 29 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Radio article: The "Teslaphiles" hit again by hiding the sheer truth which is: ONLY MARCONI IS THE INVENTOR OF THE RADIO !!

Tesla's supporters have been able to kill the history of science also in this occasion!!! What can we deduce from this crap article ???? So If we'd imagine all the protagonists of the radio invention parading in paradise (or hell, who knows it...),God seeing Marconi would ask: and who is that guy? The answer would be: Oh just an italian door to door seller fraudster who commercialized tha radio !!!This is what I deduce from this article. ARE YOU CRAZY ???? If you want to delegitimate someone you could do it in a better and less ridiculous way.

1) Marconi's law H=square(D) is the law on which is based every radio apparatus (not bad for a door to door seller). The genius Tesla didn't produce any formula, theorem, law...nothing of nothing in any field !!

2)It was Marconi who discovered that you got better range by shielding various parts of the receiver from interference; that range was proportional to the square root of antenna height; that you could produce a directional beam by placing the antenna at the focus of a metallic parabola; and who invented coherer designs an order of magnitude more sensitive. And it was Marconi who invented "syntony" (what we would nowdays call "tuning"), invented the concept of radio channels and built a device that was able to operate with multiple channels simultaneously. (not bad for a door to door seller).

3) In the Tesla's system the primary winding was made up of a few turn of a tick wire while the secondary was composed of milion of coil of a thin wire. In the Marconi apparatus the primary was composed of the number of turns capable to define with the condenser the right wave lenght, while the secondary was made up of few turns in order to get in accordance with the radiation resistance of the antenna. Without these expedients the low antenna's efficiency would have become so low not allow any long distance comunication(not bad for a door to door seller). In the Tesla's patents nothing similar exist !!!!!!

4) Marconi's antenna could change wave lenghts just by adding inductances, only Marconi's vertical antenna could do it!! (not bad for a door to door seller).

5)Marconi apparatus allowed the receiver to switch into transmitter and viceversa, it could work in duplex. (not bad for a door to door seller.)

6) The experiences of other researchers (Lodge, Righi, Bose, Tesla..)were well known to the scientific comunity, yet their power transmission were limited to the laboratory's walls and none of them was ever hailed by their contemporary as "inventor of radio" !!! None of them received comments like:

"...The first time radiotelegraphy happened was when Marconi connected his receiver wire and his transmitter wire to the ground and generated a sparkle. This was the first radiotelegraphic wave and not an hertzian wave. If we should call it we could name it Marconi's wave...." by Michael Pupin one of the greatest scientist of that time.

"...... Only a few inventions are completely new and the wireless transmission is one of that. Marconi not only gave it to us but he also lived with it and developed it...." by Charles Steinmetz, the greatest electrical engineer of that time (working togheter with Tesla).

"..Guglielmo Marconi le pere de la radio...." Popov, russian scientist, one of other contender in the invention of the radio.

7) Saying that Marconi had some predecessors (Dolbear, Loomis, Stubblefield, Tesla, Lodge, Popov...) in the wireless invention is completely wrong.They all tried without achieving any practical results. Marconi apparatus is a completely brand new technology and only Marconi got the following results:

1895- With his receiver he could reach 2500 m

1896- He could sent messages crossing an hill (1200m height) put as obstacle and reaching 3500 m distance.

1897-He could surpass earth curvature, the ionospheric one in 1899 and tropospheric 5 years before his death. (not bad for a door to door seller). Could the genius Tesla do something similar??

8)Between 1895 and 1899, Tesla claimed (the greatest claimer in the history of science !!!!)to have received wireless signals transmitted over long distances, there is no independent evidence to support it !!!!

9) All the radio apparatus followed Marconi's system after 1896, none reproduced Tesla's system (which never existed). Other attempts to follow different technologies failed miserably !!!

10) Only Marconi deserved the Nobel since Braun started getting interested in wireless only in 1898.

11)The US 1943 sentences about the 7777 patent never stated that Tesla or others was the inventor of the radio, indeed it confirms the Marconi's paternity on the invention !!!!!!!

The conclusions are:: Marconi created the only engineering system capable to comunicate at long distance. HE IS THE ONLY INVENTOR OF THE RADIO !!!!!!!! You show Marconi just as sleazy bussinesman fraudster just capable to tell the rate cost of a radio apparatus to customers around the world. It is a shame that people by digiting "radio" on google run accross this crap article. sometimes I think that wikipedia should be closed and some of his authors persecuted !!!Magnagr (talk) 11:07, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments on modifications

I'd like to highlight the fact that before my modifications, Marconi as scientist involved in the radio development had simply not existed in the radio article (history paragraph)!!!! No mention of his apparatus, no mention of his experiments, NOTHING !! He just pop up in the commercialization paragraph (of course since he is just the dodgy bussinesman ripping off the poor Tesla ). Maybe you can believe that the vikings were the first one to discover America but you cannot write a paragraph titled "The history of discovery of America" without mentioning Colombo and his landing in 1492. Maybe you can believe that the landing on the moon was just a fake but you cannot write a paragraph titled "The history of spatial exploration" without describing Apollo 11 mission. Marconi 1895 experiments was the milestone in the history of radio that the scientific comunity (and not) has universally accepted yet you had never mentioned it !!!! I repeat myself : radio transmission means sending signals at long distance !!!! And Marconi was the first one to achieve it in 1895. The other scientists transmitted signals that had not gone go beyond their laboratory's walls !! You cannot put Marconi and the other experimenters to the same levels (and you had done even worst).

I read you comments on my modifications: In July 1895 Guglielmo Marconi created the first wireless system capable of transmitting a signal at long distances (2500 m).[dubious – discuss] Dubious-discuss ???? Are you doubting the 1895 Marconi's experiments? c'mon let's be serious. Show me the existence of a complete engineering apparatus capable of sending signals at long distance, before Marconi 1895 experiments, and we can start a discussion !!!! your comment is erased

Following his experiments, Marconi deduced that transmission range is proportional to the square of the antenna height (Marconi's law).[8] This formula represents the first and basic law on which every radio apparatus is based.[citation needed] Citation needed? It is like putting a citation on the speech : "The gravitational force is...". And then requiring another citation on the subsequent speech: "that is way all the apples fall from the trees". It is obvious that all the radio apparatus follow Marconi's law. Your comment is erased

I've tried to be within the common sense. I know that "Teslaphile", in this article, had just tried to cast a dark shadow to Marconi in order to enphatize Tesla's role in the development of radio. I can absure you that you had done it in such a ridicolous way that the only thig you have achieved is to damage Tesla' image !!!! Magnagr (talk) 08:16, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I have replaced the tags. Certain things may be "obvious" to you, but WP is based on verifiablity and requires reliable sourcing. Please read or review these policies. Also, please assume good faith on the part of other editors. Calling those with whom you may disagree "Teslaphiles" or other such names is potentially disruptive, and not in the spirit of collaborative editing. Thank you. Hertz1888 (talk) 09:06, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Mistyifing history of science is the only disruptive thing. I've noticed that in all the article only my contribution requires 3 citations in just two lines (guess why....). Therefore I erase again the comments on my contribution. Magnagr (talk) 09:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have no preference for Tesla or Marconi. My only interest is in ensuring that information is accurately documented, free from assertions which can can not be verified. I'm happy to give your entries consideration; but solid, verifiable sourcing is needed to back them up. Wildbear (talk) 19:51, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It so strange that only each speech of my contribution needs a verifiable sourcing. It doesn't happen with the contribution of other authors, yet I'm just reporting the well known story of radio that even the stones know. I don't have problem in providing the correct reference for each one of my assertions.Magnagr (talk) 20:37, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Within Wikipedia's Guglielmo Marconi article the following is stated (currently in reference 9): "Marconi's late-1895 transmission of signals was for around a mile (1.6 km). This was small compared to Tesla's early-1895 transmissions of up to 50 miles. For more see "Nikola Tesla On His Work with Alternating Currents and Their Application to Wireless Telegraphy, Telephony, and Transmission of Power", Leland I. Anderson, Twenty First Century Books, 2002, pp. 26-27." Who is correct? I don't know. I like references — especially references which get close to the point of origin and which make the issue very clear. When matters are in doubt, it can be helpful to have multiple references, to provide corroboration and back up the assertion. What you have been putting forward is not commonly known and not without debate. I have been working with radio and electronics for more than 40 years, and I still have not seen a clear, verifiably accurate picture of what happened at this time in history. As it stands, multiple articles on Wikipedia conflict with each other on this matter, and it needs to be sorted out with good referencing. Wildbear (talk) 21:56, 19 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think that we are all rational people and common sense should be our main guidance. If Tesla (or who else) in 1895 had achieved long distance radio transmission(50 miles) before the italian scientist he would have been hailed as the "father of Radio" and not Marconi. Yet Tesla had many advantages towards Marconi: He was already well established in the scientific community while Marconi was an "outsider"; Tesla lived in what was already one of the most industrialized and advanced country in the world and not in the 1895 backward Italy; Tesla had the support of industrial multinationals working in the electric fields which would have taken profits from a working radio apparatus, Marconi had none to back him. Maybe Tesla was not concerned with money but he was obsessed with being recognized as the first one in achieving something. So, why his long distance transmission was not recorded, recognized, accepted, why he was not considered the father of this new technology? Shall we believe to the old story of Tesla persecuted by the establishment? Well, Marconi was more persecuted and hated than Tesla. He was not an academic and the scientific world hated him. The big industrial companies which built submarine cables saw their business in danger, since a Marconi's radio station cost only 120000 pounds compared to the 3 milion pounds of a transatlantic submarine cable connection, so there was as well a lot of ostracism towards him by the industry world. Moreover he was an outspoken supporter of the fascist regime and in the after war Italy (and abroad) his memory and works were completely neglected and forgotten (in Italy in 1945 the official celebration of the radio anniversary was even cancelled and the Elettra boat demolished). More important, as I wrote before, Tesla's apparatus would have never worked on long distances. Only Marconi's radioreceiver had the characteristics to do it. Nowadays Tesla has became more famous than Marconi just because Marconi has been depicted as a fascist just focused on making money, while Tesla the poor scientist forgotten by the evil world. Tesla has the support of the people of his native country (Serbia and Croatia) and that one where he operated (USA), Marconi not (even today is difficult to see on the italian TV some documentary about him). Following the "Dan Brown" culture it seems that only the "anti-story" is true, that's another reason why Tesla has became so popular. Moreover, for obscure reasons Tesla has became a sort a cult for freaky "New age" people who consider him as a sort of divinity (read some comments on him on youtube and you'll be appaled). I've just moved abroad and I couldn't take with me my books on Marconi and the history of radio, anyway I'll try to put the required references as soon as possible. Magnagr (talk) 10:31, 20 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Notes on reverting

My previous and fully referenced section on Marconi as inventor and scientist (which before me didn't exist at all !!!!) has been erased or modified without my opinion or comment. The 1943 US sentence is ridiculously long and is just a POV of the authors. No court case was ever held to decide who the inventor of the radio was. The aim of the article is to discredit Marconi in order to make believe Tesla as the inventor of the radio. My version has a NPOV, not yours !! Magnagr (talk) 14:28, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I improved it. And inserted Marconi's law. --J. D. Redding 20:16, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Why did you remove Marconi's law? WTF? --J. D. Redding 21:16, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And in a related edit in the Induction motor ... you did this! What are you doing? Please read Silvanus Phillips Thompson books! --J. D. Redding 21:20, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

No draw, model, patent, public demonstration about 1882 Tesla's "conceivement". No serious book about induction motor reports the 1882 "conceived idea" but just 1885 ( Galileo Ferraris) and 1888 (Ferraris and Tesla). Your reference reports only Tesla own words. Magnagr (talk) 21:36, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Could one of you explain why you are edit warring? Is it a "Marconi invented radio" versus "Tesla invented radio" dispute? - LuckyLouie (talk) 23:28, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Magnagr has been reverted on several occasions by several different editors in several different articles.
No one person invented radio, see invention of radio. But notice, Magnagr is editing Italian and non-Tesla views. Also he is removing referenced material. 23:36, 2 December 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I just compared the two versions, and I agree that the current version is preferable to Magnagr's additions that appear to unduly favor Marconi. - LuckyLouie (talk) 23:46, 2 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Magnagr's additions that appear to unduly favor Marconi??? I don't know if crying or laughing......Let's check your "balanced" version
1)According to the Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute in 1899, the Marconi instruments had a "[...] coherer, principle of which was discovered some twenty years ago, [and was] the only electrical instrument or device contained in the apparatus that is at all new".[15].
Among the hundred of scientists and the most prestigious scientific society backing Marconi you have been able to mention the "world famous" United States Naval Institute just to discredit Marconi..
2)In 1943 the United States Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent for radio, number 645,576 (1897), with the supreme court's justification that claim 16 in Marconi's related patent, number 763,772 (1904), contained nothing new not having been published earlier and registered by Tesla, Lodge, and others. After years of patent battles by Marconi's company, the United States Supreme Court, in the 1943 case "Marconi Wireless Telegraph co. of America v. United States", held regarding the priority of engineering advances concerning the invention of radio that "[but] it is now held that in the important advance upon his basic patent Marconi did nothing that had not already been seen and disclosed".[18][19] The decision effectively awarded priority of the invention of radio to Tesla and his 1893 presentation in St. Louis.[20] Although Marconi claimed that he had no knowledge of prior art taken from Tesla's patents, the supreme court considered his claim false.[21] In addition to the June 21, 1943 ruling made by the supreme court, the United States Court of Claims also invalidated the fundamental Marconi patent earlier, in 1935.[22] This case defined radio by the statement: "A radio communication system requires two tuned circuits each at the transmitter and receiver, all four tuned to the same frequency."[23] Because Tesla's 1897 patent for radio was intended for general transmission of energy, the court determined that Tesla's patent clearly was the first to disclose a system which could be used for wireless communication of intelligible messages (such as human voice and music) and used the four-circuit tuned combination.
A TEN LINES very balanced comment on a groundless urban legend. The 1943 court case was not intended to decided who the inventor of the radio was and never stated that Tesla was the inventor of the radio !!! Why don't you report as well the comments of the court in favour of Marconi that I wrote and that u obviously ignored, and this would be the balanced version !?!?!?
I omit to discuss the ridiculous diagram showing the patent's right evolution
And I should continue to rely on your good faith....Magnagr (talk) 00:14, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Additions such as "The event marked the dawn of a new era in radio transmission technology" are what I was referring to. They are undue weight as well as original research. - LuckyLouie (talk) 00:33, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If the Titanic survivors had to rely on Lodge or Tesla few meters radio apparatus they would have surely died. You should have asked to one of them if the Marconi's invention didn't marked the dawn of a new era.... Magnagr (talk) 10:36, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Again 1) Marconi sent signal at 1.5 miles and not 1.5 km. The related reference has been erased since is not a reference but just an author's comment against Marconi. 2)The USA Naval Institute is a not rigorous source, I can put many others source saying the contrary. 3)The 10 LINES comments about the 1943 US supreme court is just an author POV, ridiculously long and unequivocally an anti Marconi and a pro Tesla spot. Tesla has never replaced Marconi as the inventor of the radio! The reference 20 in your version say that only Tesla supporters (as u) consider the sentence as a prove that Tesla invented the radio and not the scientific community!! Or you change drastically this passage of the article or I will continue on erasing it.Magnagr (talk) 21:13, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The current version is one of the less balanced article ever seen in wikipedia. It has been written just to stab in the back Marconi and to show Tesla as the only inventor of the radio. It cannot be present in wikipedia for a longer period. Or the authors propose quite soon valid correction to the article or I will edit again my version.Magnagr (talk) 23:54, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Revisions to Amateur Radio section

Edits like this one that take what's intended to be a brief, broad summary of amateur radio and refocus it with UK-specific information are unhelpful. As Kvng did, I too felt your addition of a main article link was redundant, and so removed it. Responding by removing all links to main articles was not good form. How about you explain what it is you want to do, and let's see if we can reasonably do that, stay within WP policy, and arrive at what's best for the article. - LuckyLouie (talk) 16:43, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is interesting, (but not challenging), to find a Wikipedia article with its own police force, and group of censors operating in unison. Wp:OWN?. My edits are both factual and informative to compliment, and make clear, the content that an article contains. When editing articles I take care to add country specific information with regard to my additions. This avoids confusion to the reader, and assists other contributors to assess the validity of my contrbution.

With reference to the Amatuer radio section:-

The first point

The license is not for "enjoyment", it is granted, (after suitable examination), as a privilige, not a right to broadcast in general. I have my City and Guilds certificates in my shack, and am suitably proud of the achievement and years of studying morse code it took to get them. C.B. radio, (which I also have used 30 years ago), is for the purpose of "enjoyment", not usually experiment.

Point 2

If it is to be a brief, broad section, why include information about "lives saved"?. We don`t do this in articles about Telegraphy or Telephony etc. No attempt has be made to show the reader *why* or *how* HAM organisations allow this be acheived. We are not allowed to broadcast on public broadcast frequencies, no matter what the emergency. (P.S., transmission modes are not "nostalgic", try working "across the pond" using USB in noisy conditions, with 100 hz bandwidth CW filter it`s like "talking next door" and faster than PSK31.)Francis E Williams (talk) 20:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Point 3

If "some of the frequncy bands may suffer interference", under what circumstances "may" they be interfered with? and from what major primary sources?. It wold take a long sentence to make it simple to the reader.

Point 4

If links to the main article are to be included on the text for this section, as opposed to WP:MOS, why not try to be consistent with this practice througout the article?

Finally, - It is also bad form to "edit war" and instantly remove factual information. Radio is not country specific, the section has no country specific focus. If it takes me this long to add a few sentences to each article, I will be dead before I make any useful contributions. I now suffer with Macular degeneration, it has taken me hours to type up and post this reply to show I mean no harm to this article. Do you vet all editors to this article on the talk pages? My above comments are made with good intention, combined with both knowledge and experience, verifiable by research, as so are my edits to any article. I will be most interested to provide knowledge, and be involved in any article that includes content about, Antenna, Radio, Amateur Television, Digital computers, Sound Recording, Electronic Engineering etc. having spent a lifetime qualified in these fields I feel able to add somewhat to this young Encyclopedia. I can only encourage all contributors to be accurate, if you don`t know it, please research it more thoroughly first. The whole world is watching what you do. End of lesson one, :), 73s, RegardsFrancis E Williams (talk) 19:51, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Francis. Re Point 4, I agree with you that the use of links to main articles should be consistent. I'm guessing we've been using the mainlinks at "Electromagnetic spectrum" and "Early history" only because the words do not appear in the first line or two of text and are not there to link to, as they do in "Amateur Radio". But I'm open to finding a better way to do it. Re your other points, I'll add my thoughts a bit later, and in the meantime I'm hoping a few others will join the discussion so we can ponder your suggestions and form a consensus of how to write the "Amateur Radio" paragraph in a way that best serves this article. - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:23, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hello again, sure, no problem, take all the time you need. The only thing is, the article will remain grade "B+ to "C-" until parts of it become more complete, factually accurate and grammatically correct for readability. Some of the most important uses to mankind are in medicine (MRI scanner), radio astronomy and astrophysics, particle physics, metallurgy, aircraft landing systems etc.. I guess that serious contributors will shy away from contributing to bring it up to GA class if this is the way you chose to welcome factual and verifiable content. I hope you recognise the fact that tutors are not inexperienced, nor lacking in knowledge of their fields of expertise, it doesn`t all come from reading books you know.Francis E Williams (talk) 12:11, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Redraft "Amateur Radio section"

I had a chance to look over the material again this morning. I propose we might improve the "amateur radio" section of this article by adapting the definition from the main amateur radio article. It's been relatively stable over there for some time and its evolution represents a fair consensus of opinions.

  • I think the scope of its definition addresses our point #1 and avoids limiting the purpose of ham radio solely to "experimentation".
  • For point #2, "ham radio saving lives" is something that could be arguably kept as relevant to a general audience, or deleted as puffery. I honestly don't care either way, since "public service" covers the issue much more objectively. And characterizing CW as "nostalgic" I feel was someone's good-faith attempt to contrast the historical/technological scope of the modes that hams use, rather than disparage CW as a mode. Perhaps it may be better not to characterize the modes at all. I would however change Lowfer to something else since it's not actually a "mode", or lose it altogether.
  • As to point #3, I'm not convinced that a discussion of the effect of power-line internet service on amateur radio really belongs in a short summary subsection about the hobby. No doubt we can cite sources for it, and it certainly is an important issue to hams. I just wonder if it's appropriate to give weight to in this situation.
  • Finally, I wonder if our paragraph might benefit by some brief description of regulatory infrastructure of the hobby and its global scale, e.g. numbers of participants. Your thoughts are, of course, appreciated on all of these matters. I've drafted a sample paragraph below that incorporates some of the revs we talked about:
Amateur radio, often called ham radio, is both a hobby and a service in which participants, called "hams", use various types of radio communications equipment to communicate with other radio amateurs for public services, recreation and self-training. The term "amateur" is used to differentiate it from commercial two-way radio services. Radio amateurs use a variety of modes including Morse code, and several forms of radio were pioneered by radio amateurs and later became commercially important including FM, single-sideband (SSB), AM, digital packet radio, PSK and satellite repeaters. Amateur radio operation is licensed by individual governing nations and coordinated through the International Telecommunication Union. An estimated two million people throughout the world are regularly involved with amateur radio.

NB: I realize you may have some eyesight issues, so I've tried to make the Talk page as easy as possible to navigate. Cheers - LuckyLouie (talk) 17:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again Louie, appreciate the layout. I think we are talking from the same page here now, and the proposal to change the paragraph is a major step in the right direstion, but i`m runnig out of gas here waiting at these traffic lights on the Interstate junction of your community. I guess I`ll take my chances and back up the old R.V. across the central reservation and go back down the I95 to Daytona. It`s warmer there, and who knows, I might go visit the snow birds on the white sands of Clearwater on the west coast of orange county. After some chow I`ll leave a parcel here on the sidewalk. If someone from the community wants to venture out and pick through the pieces, there may be some useful stuff, maybe not, we`ll see.

Thought for the day

This section should be at the start of your article really, when you get up in the morning, switch on the radio, check your cell phone for texts, spend a while on the Nintendo DSi, shuffle about a bit on your Wii in front of your Satellite enabled TV. Perhaps then you might switch on the Wireless note book to check emails. On your way out you`ll reach for the wireless fob to open the garage, go for the one that unlocks the automoble, switch on the radio for traffice information, poke the screen on the Sat Nav with your finger. If it wasn`t for the "Hams" (with the heavy "ham fisted" hands on those morse keys all those years ago), you wouldn`t be able to do diddley squat when you wake up to another new technological day. Like Arnie, "I`ll be back" this way soon after I`ve warmed up, and gassed up again. (...- .-) (end of work). (-.. .) (-- ----- ..-. . .--) (--.- .-. -) ( . . ) 73s Francis E Williams (talk) 10:07, 21 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]