QNews for April 14th 2024 Q-News AR News from Queensland

Hello, I’m Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP, and I’ve been thinking.

In this great information age powered by the digital revolution and the internet, there is undoubtedly the greatest access to the most information that the world has known. That is not hyperbole or in the more modern jargon, clickbait. It is a fact that the amount of data grows exponentially each and every day and in fact the data storage and processing is being classed as a climate change factor by reason of the electricity that is used, the heat that is generated and the water that is used for cooling.

I spend a reasonable amount of time checking out different things that interest me and I use various components of the internet to do so. In many cases I am looking to see what others have recorded about particular items and one of the easiest ways is to watch videos. There are tremendous resources available to the electronics and ham radio communities and learning to refine your search terms certainly speeds up access to the sources.

Herein lies the great difficulty that until we are familiar with a topic it is very hard to judge the quality of the material that you read or view. I have frequently followed a very sincere looking presentation with another on the same topic only to have points of contradiction be glaringly obvious between the two. If the subject is quite recently presented to the world, it may be hard to find the critiques that shade and colour the picture and I am left with the big question mark and scratching my head. How do I know what is right?

Fortunately in our field of interest, the laws that govern how radio and electronics are well enough established that it is only in the minute details that we will see radical change. In other words, the material in the manuals and text books is going to be more than accurate than we need in the practical world. It is for this reason that I have a small library of standard books of varying ages and they can provide most of the theoretical and technical answers that I need for my purposes.

This is where I point you to belonging to a club which maintains a library for members to use. Along with equipment and instruments, books are a valuable resource and should be available to club members, at least. I have seen reports over the past years that public libraries have cleared most of their shelves of amateur radio type material and it then becomes the province of the club and individual amateur operator to source and maintain these valuable resources.

Every day there are questions to which I don’t have the right answer and being able to “fact check”, with better accuracy than on social media, is a source of satisfaction.

I’m Geoff Emery VK4ZPP and that’s what I think….how about you?

----------------------------------------------------------*

Social Scene

Clubs are welcome to submit text with audio for this section

WIA AGM held MAY 4-5 2024 in BUNDABERG. (barc)

Park-fest 4 & 5 of May Bundaberg (vk4kc)

Caboolture Radio Club Hamfest July 11 (vk7jea)

GOLD COAST HAMFEST OCTOBER 13 (Venue to be announced) (vk4DMH)