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Position: The Radio Room
“Ain’t it like most people? I’m no different, we love to talk on things we don’t know about.” – The Avett Brothers, Ten Thousand Words
Harboring a fantasy and living it is, let’s be honest, not the same thing. Daydreams are ephemera. Vague notions that get us through a busy and otherwise tedious day. Fantasies are not supposed to be realized. They are after all, fantasies. Until they aren’t. At that point our dreams, those passionate yearnings, become something else. They become something tangible.
In my case it was the sharp, stabbing pain of realizing that while I’d been sailing for a good deal of my life, I have never owned a boat. I’ve owned houses, cars, lawn mowers, step ladders, computers, but never a boat. What was once someone else’s problem, the charter company’s or the ferry authority’s, was now mine. Or more correctly, ours. Our context has changed from whimsical vacations to a life-or-death lifestyle. Phrases that we blithely kicked around as amateurs suddenly became yawning gaps in knowledge and abject manifestations of ignorance.
Arses and Elbows
Take the phrase ‘SSB’. Innocuous enough. Three simple letters that even a novice sailing BS’er could figure out meant Single Side Band (a type of radio). But in all honestly, when presented with the glowing screen and myriad buttons of Aleta’s iCOM-802, I didn’t know my HF from TNC, or my arse from my elbow.
But I’m a lifelong learner. As a child I hated school. Growing up surrounded by intellectuals I wanted to compete, but realized early on that I was bringing a corkscrew to a knife fight. Far better to shut up and listen than start expressing opinions. Thus I became an autodidact, or worse (according to Patrick O’Brian) an empiric. Many years later I realized that ‘experts’ who, as soon as they step outside their wheelhouse, simply make stuff up to keep the conversation going. With that insight, I’ve developed great respect for source materials. And I am very appreciative of common sense, a depressingly rare commodity these days. To quote Professor Einstein, “The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.” For that feat alone people deserve Nobel prizes.
Thus when faced with 124 pages of iCOM instruction manual, I turned first to the ARRL study guide for technician class ham operators. iCOM simply assumes too much knowledge. Thanks to the valiant efforts of several ham radio buffs, I now know enough to be consciously incompetent. Still, they gave me the confidence to skim the iCOM’s manual, start twiddling dials and hook up its COM port to my computer. Let the ‘net‘ partying begin!
