One of the most disturbing references I have recently heard about Ham Radio is that it should be plug and play! I have heard this most often on the 2 Meter wavelength band but, also even on 6 Meters. Truly scary! An additional scary thing is also that when I heard this on 2 Meters, it wasn't only from neophyte Technician licensees! Although I'm sure they were licensed since only 1996 or so.

Now the Technician class of license; there is a troublesome corollary. Most Technician licensees I have talked with in the last five or six years have no interest or abilities in any form of technical endeavor. This tends to be true not only of radio electronics but, even simple DC electronics! Even the algebraic constants of Ohms Law to these half decade or so licensed Hams are strangely unknown. This is also true relating to any scientific desire to investigate radio. Why then do we hold this name for what has clearly become the entry level license? If it is for tradition only, its an insult to every Technician licensee that made great achievements and discoveries in the realm of frequencies on the VHF or higher spectrum!

Ham Radio was intended to be an inquisitive hobby where the vagaries of nature that occurred in communication were fun to explore; and gratifying to solve and find answers for. It was the best physical laboratory available to any citizen. Tens of thousands of megacycles of radio frequency spectrum to explore! It was a conceptual realm where the everyday experimenter could cultivate and demonstrate a knowledge of physical science that was as well respectable as any professional radio astronomer could do. This hasn't changed; there is still a lot to learn!

Find out for yourself. Investigate and research names like Grote Reber, Arno Penzias, and John Kraus. They were Ham's, and they made monumental discoveries as Ham's. Look at the history of early investigations into HF communication in the late1940's and '50's. Investigate and note how comparatively little research has been done on VHF, UHF, and SHF since. Add to these names Edwin Armstrong, Randy Runyon, and Philo Farnsworth.

These earlier Hams I mentioned didn't even know the term plug and play. I suspect that if they had had the impression that electronics and radio could be distilled to this level; they would not have come out to play!