Hi. My name is Ted, and I'm a seismoholic. I define that as somebody who's willing to try anything and even learn some new stuff to get their own station up and running. Take somebody who sends in the classic note to the psn list - "I just found out about you guys, and I've been thinking for years about building my own sensor. Where can I get some plans?" Well, when he finally gets to work building that Lehman it's not going to be the first time he ever held a screwdriver. He's driven in the same screwy way that a lot of us are, but he must be pretty mechanically minded in addition to the interest in the earth sciences. But even among the inmates of the asylum there's a distribution of abilities. Face it you hardware geniuses - there are a lot more ways to put a pile of parts together wrong than right. (And that *really* applies to electronics!) Look at all the creative solutions that have been developed (no, invented!) for the point where the base of the Lehman boom is supported by the crosspiece. These ideas were born out of necessity. But not everyone believes it is necessary for their home-built Lehman to work. We all get frustrated. Some react by leaving the hobby. Others react by coming up with new approaches. There's a bunch of folks out there who want the results without building their own stuff. That might mean that they actually have a life. (Ouch!) But nobody can make me believe that the guy who buys his gear, then actually runs his own seismic station and enjoys it, won't be an asset to Amateur Seismology. Are Hams who buy their radios allowed to talk to guys who make their own? Sure they are, the question is what do you bring to the community. Our strength is that united by a common interest we bring enough skills in separate areas that they overlap to cover many areas. My MS is in Engineering Science but it was actually Aquatic Ecology, so I'm not any type of engineer. But try and list the set of "skill areas" you have to be familiar with to construct your own sensor, hook it up to a computer, build an amp/filter, wire it all up, put your data on the web, and understand where your quality challenges are for future improvements? Jeepers, it covers pretty much everything outside of Philosophy and Religion - woodworking, metalworking, mechanical eng., electrical eng., circuit design, soldering skills, power supply engineering, software, PC repair. Plus to have a clue what you are finally seeing you have to understand some seismic theory and geology. Even Windows! So my thesis is that nobody is going to be able to acquire all those skills "on the fly" - you've either got confidence (right or wrong) you can build the thing or you're not going to start. Now the list of folks with a goodly subset of those skills is darn small. What do we do about the rest of the world? I say, bring 'em on in and make it as easy as possible. Back in 1979 if I had any money I would have bought anything I could just to be able to have a finger (imagine, my own finger!) on the pulse of the planet. But you couldn't buy anything back then except Heathkit chart recorders. So I bought one and it worked perfectly until I tried to reconstruct it into a drum recorder. Disaster, and it never worked again. I went outside my skill set hoping I could learn enough on the fly, but got burned. Oh well, maybe a PC could do the job... But I couldn't have gotten anything working without the help of folks like Jan Froom, Steve Hammond and Dick Chelberg who knew enough engineering and electronics to complement somebody who could program a little. You're hearing from a guy who, for two years (!) thought you could get +/- 12V out of two 6V batteries. And I did *not* make my own earthquakes! Regards, Ted Blank __________________________________________________________ Public Seismic Network Mailing List (PSN-L)
Larry Cochrane <cochrane@..............>