[sdiy] Horowitz/Hill

[KHeck73 at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/5/2003 6:59:27 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
mclilith at charter.net writes:


> My technician training had a lot of hands-on experience at each stage of
> the program. Lots of practical tips were passed on by our instructors
> (things that weren't mentioned in the books), and there was certainly
> enough theory to understand how and why all the hands-on activities
> actually functioned. We covered a lot of ground in 2 years. (We also
> attended class all day long, five days a week--just like on a "real" job.)
> Most of my instructors were also retired Navy electronics specialists. That
> brought a certain sense of dedication and discipline to the course.
> 

I read this and think of a teacher that influenced me alot. 

My high school electronics teacher was a former Navy electronics specialist. 
The Navy must have done a good job training their engineers. He taught me how 
to design different class vacuum tube and transistor amplifiers. He also 
taught me how to repair vacuum tube TV's. We would take turns in class messing one 
up to see who could figure out the problem. (I guess the days of TV repair are 
now gone; just discard and buy a new one). He also stayed after school many 
hours so I could spend time working on projects using the school's facilities. 
This included my Paia 2720/4700 synth built from scratch PCBs and everything. 
(I rode my bike to the local library to copy John Simonton's R-E articles from 
microfilm). Hell, he taught me the 'BBROYGBVGW' resistor code mnemonic. Also, 
in morse code, the slash symbol sounds like: "shave and a hair cut".

I've been interested in electronics since age 6 or earlier. I got into ham 
radio, Heathkits, and other stuff, and by age 15, I had my General ham license 
and took two years of electronics in High School. I learned more about real 
electronics in high school than I learned in my first two years of EE in a 4-year 
college. In fact, I switched majors from EE to Materials Engineering so I 
could do something more hands-on. I can now better understand what the college EE 
curriculum designers intended with regard to the basic fundamentals, but they 
also did a good job of boring me at a time when I needed to be further 
motivated in the short term. At age 18-20, the present circumstance seemed to fully 
define the future. That's not true.

-Karl.
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