ARLA/CLUSTER: Episódio 180 da série " Foundations of Amateur Radio "

[João Costa > CT1FBF]

Foundations of Amateur Radio #180

When failure doesn't matter ...

The other day I read a message from Theodore KS5I who has been around
the block a couple of times. He recalls the excitement he experienced
when he was first licensed in 1967, the year I was born.

He described that at the time transistors were just coming into their
own and it was so wonderful to be learning about them.

The closing sentence sealed it for me:

Theodore wrote: Perhaps, its time for some of us more mature operators
to release the past so our hands are free to grab hold of the future
and share the enthusiasm of those who look ahead with the same hope
and excitement that we had so many years ago..

It's that level of enthusiasm that our hobby needs to foster and
develop. The landscape we live in is changing all the time, but new
adventures are always just around the corner. They might not look like
what was available 50 years ago, or last year, or even yesterday, but
they too have their place in the pursuit of amateur radio.

Learning is a lifelong activity. If you stop learning, you - as
Theodore eloquently puts it - just die.

Learning can be scary. Educator Eduardo Briceño talks about the
learning zone and the performance zone. The learning zone is when the
goal is to improve, concentrating on what we've not yet mastered and
the expectation is that mistakes will happen.

The performance zone on the other hand is when we do something as best
as we can. We concentrate on what we already know and try to minimise
mistakes.

Amateur radio can operate in either of those zones, doing a contest
and going hard can be a performance zone activity, do what we do, do
it fast and avoid mistakes.

We could also see our activities as a learning zone. We try new
things, some will work and some will fail. If we're doing a contest as
a learning activity, what skill do you want to master? Is it handing
off the QSO, taking the log, recognising a callsign, knowing the CQ
zones, matching prefixes to countries and antenna directions, picking
the right band, managing battery life or recognising the band
conditions?

Pick one of those skills and try different things, expect mistakes and
learn from them. Over time the thing you practised will be a new skill
you've mastered, ready for use when you're going hell for leather in
the CQ WW making contacts left right and centre to the envy of your
peers.

Of course, this doesn't just apply to contesting. For me it's
currently about electronics, about figuring out how stuff works and
how to apply that to my shack. For you it might be something else in
the myriad of options that the 1000 hobbies that amateur radio
represents.

Life is about growing. Amateur radio is a journey, not a destination.
Closing off your options because valves are no longer in vogue and
Allstar isn't real radio is just a recipe for stagnation.

If you have a dozen minutes to spare, check out Eduardo Briceño's TED
talk: How to get better at the things you care about

One final point.

f you're new to this adventure, your license still wet, then you don't
know what you don't know, so you'll spend lots of time in the learning
zone. Don't be afraid, it's a great place to be and a wonderful way to
explore the hobby in all its variety

I'm Onno VK6FLAB

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