Re: How does anyone learn electronics these days?

Bill, you can still buy those old 15V batteries, but it takes more than
a little research to find a mail order source that can supply one. (I
just replaced on in my Triplett, but am not going to hold my breath for
when I need another maybe 10 years from now. IIRC, Newark Electronics
was able to supply it, but it cost something like $20.)

You're correct, now that ham radio has essentially gone the way of the
dodo, very few people lean basic electronics today. The best starting
point remains the ARRL Handbook, and the followed by Horowitz and
Hill's, "The Art of Electonics", but few people other than serious
hobbiests bother to study material at this very important basic level.

I can share with you as a fact that many EE college graduates today
don't have an understanding of basic electronics, except perhaps kids
from MIT, Cal Tech, and similar places. Still, when I was a kid back in
the 1950s, your average radio and TV repairman has a more in dept
understanding of the fundamental than some college graduates have
today. Still I'm not complaining, because this vacuum of practical
knowledge is precisely what creates a consulting market for some of old
farts to retired from the industry close to ten years ago. Some dark
clouds have a silver lining.

Harry C.






Bill Shymanski wrote:
When I was a youngster, I spent many a happy childhood hour tearing
apart old radios and TVs, messing about with bags of surplus transistors
bought at Radio Shack, and poring over old issues of "Elementary
Electronics" trying to make sense of the tutorial series. My pride and
joy was the 20,000 ohm/volt (analog) multimeter my Dad bought for me.
I *dreaded* of One Christmas I was given a Heathkit "19-in-one"
electronics kit and spent many a happy hour trying to improve on the
original projects.

But - how does a kid get involved in electronics today? You really
can't impress the parents by pulling out a tube and riding down to the
drugstore, testing it, and getting Grandma's table radio working again.
Everything is built of mystery chips with 37-digit part numbers that
were made for three weeks and will never been seen again. Everything is
potted in plastic. The gap between listening to a local AM broadcaster
on the tiny crystal earpiece from a breadboard TRF radio and the typical
consumer electronics is now so huge that it would be hard, I think, for
even an intelligent and motivated child to make the leap between them.

And I can't even buy the 15-volt battery for my old VOM.

Bill

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