Posted 4 years ago
dav2no1
(839 items)
hy-gain Antenna Advertisement Give-Away
Approximately 3" x 6"
**DISCLAIMER - SEE BELOW (before you open a can of worms)**
Dad had this sign hanging in his electronics workshop in the basement. My father repaired Ham Radios as a hobby for fellow Ham Radio enthusiasts. He had a huge parts bin..see pictures. As a matter of fact, that pink sign in the middle of the parts bin, says the same warning!
**NOT WHAT PEOPLE THINK!**
“cotton-picking” as an expression of disapproval or emphasis. "It is a euphemism for the word “damned” and is just one of hundreds of Southern phrases used as an adjective and really has nothing to do with actually picking cotton." So, don't stir the pot!
Additionally most white people picked cotton in the past, unless they were wealthy. Cotton was not just picked by black slaves before the Civil War, and was picked by almost everyone in the years after the war.
Cotton was the cash crop of the South and money had to be made in a time when the South was poor.
Hy-gain
"Hy-Gain (often written "hy-gain") is a manufacturer of antenna and antenna related products for the amateur radio industry."
My mom picked cotton as a child (she was a white child)....no shame in picking cotton. It had to get done if the family was to have money. And some cotton was taken home to my granny who carded it and used it in her quilts.Her cotton cards are still in our family.
I’ve heard that expression plenty of times but never thought it was offensive.....kinda like ‘gosh darn’ or ‘dad blamed’, ‘cotton picking’ just sounds so innocent compared to the 4-letter-words, profanity and vulgar words that get tossed around these days.
Thank you for your comments. There are ignorant people everywhere nowadays. Only knowledge can overcome stupidity and ignorance.
I tried to throw in a few southern phrases for satire. I'm not southern, but like you...I grew up hearing these phrases.
Carding....that's like making all the fibers unidirectional? Can you give us a picture of what that looks like...
Yes. carding combs the cotton fibers all in one direction and removes bits of debris.
My sister has my grandmother’s set of cotton cards so they are not available for me to post. Next time I get to visit her, I’ll be sure to photograph them. Maybe I can pick a few cotton bolls to card so I can show the process. (There are cotton fields where the crops are planted near the road so I could stop and pick up a few pieces the harvesters missed (mechanical harvesters, not human)....harvesting occurs in summer, so it will be a while. That would be an interesting project to post!
That would be an awesome post. I believe us hard-core collectors need to share our knowledge. This current trend of erasing the past is BS. There's always things to learn from history.
An example...in the 90s, if memory serves me correct, the US Navy was searching for a way to measure the oceans depth(or something like that?). Once they figured out a method, which took quite awhile...they discovered that Nikola Tesla had already done this almost 100 years earlier!
I totally agree.
This post deserves a "Hy-Five" and should be re-posted over and over.
I can only say that it never one sound racial to me, all it means is "keep your hand off".
Watchsearcher, I look forward to seeing your posting in the future - educational and informational. Lori
As far as I know my family never grew cotton, but grew tobacco in Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri from the mid-1600s until the early 1900s. My grandfather, who died in 1936, never bought tobacco, but always grew his own and rolled his own cigars. My family moved "up north" in 1857 but settled among other Southerners and my parents still kept southern customs, ate southern food, etc., their whole lives. Eh, regarding renaming some old brands, if some people find it offensive then I think it is a problem and don't have an issue with those old names and images going away. Some of my ancestors came to America as indentured servants, political and military exiles and religious refugees but within a generation or two were able to assimilate into society. There isn't any doubt that there has been a lot of systemic racism in the US, but the attempt to redress it can be off counter productive in some instances, IMHO.
I have significant ancestry in North and South Carolina, too, in the 1700s so they may have grown cotton.... I will have to look at some estate inventories to see if they had tools used in cotton production...
Great post, by the way. I was an electronic technician for a dozen, or so, years in the 1980s-1990s and had parts bins, parts manuals, test equipment, etc., at home for most of that time. I left it all in storage in the basement of my apartment when I moved from the West Coast to the Midwest and changed careers. Everything was going to surface mount technology about then... Your post brought back some memories.
Thank you for sharing your memories and opinions. I'm glad this post generated positive feedback.
I grew up with Tom & Jerry, but because I'm educated, I know you don't hit people over the head with a shovel. Or stick your finger or carrot(bugs bunny) in the end of a shotgun and it will blow up. I viewed it for what is was, funny and entertaining. I also believe that if an image or name "sets you off", then maybe the issue lies whithin you. I always bought land of lakes butter and thought the image was iconic and admired the Indian. Never once thought thought any different.
As far as my father..when new people came over for the first time, it was shock & awe. I learned basic things and a love for tinkering from my father. In retrospect, I wish I paid more attention. My father was an incredibly smart person. I believe that "know it all, always right" attitude was why we didn't always see "eye to eye".
My father passed away in 2006. Every year I have hauled electronics to the Washington State Fair Grounds(formally The Puyallup Fair) for the radio club electronics flea market. I am getting there, but a long ways to go. Have 10 totes and 2 tables reserved, but it got canceled this year. Interesting note, being half Japanese...the Washington State Fair Grounds parking lot, is where the Japanese internment camp was. No one ever talks about how those citizens lost their houses and businesses just because...
It looks like he was a well respected Man of organization
An organization ,I’ve ever been able to get myself into one
I think king of joining my local collectAhaulics
It was organized chaos...ha ha..my sister and I became electronics experts after dad passed, as we had to sort through the "good stuff" from the bulk.
The bottom left picture...you see the cabinets on the right side.... Those held carbon resistors. Every drawer had dividers with different ohm ratings. That is 2 cabinets stacked, so there was 4 total with thousands of resistors.
I did quite a bit of research into the Manzanar Relocation Project as the wife of an artist I collect was interred there in 1942. I wrote her biography as part of my research. There was some reparation in 1988 for living Japanese Americans who had been interred, but it was a pittance and did not really redress the wrong done to them or make them whole. Their internment was a racist act.
BTW, dav2no1, this would be a remarkable coincidence, but your sister's name isn't Becky by any chance, is it?
No it is not..
Thanks everyone again for your comments and sharing your stories!
love it all, the sign says it all ....why people have to twist what is say around to suit them is be on me ...lol CQ CQ .....used to hit the big ham fest in the NE...later
For those who don't know..saying CQ is used during Ham Radio contests..."cq, cq cq contest, this is W7XXX calling". Hams trying to reach other Hams in a set amount of time(usually 24 - 48 hours and sometimes more). Once they reach another operator, they wrote the call sign in a log, then later sent them a QSL card to verify the contact. A QSL card is like a postcard with their Ham call sign on it, and spaces to fill in the information about the contact they made.
CQ is short for "seeking you"
QSL is part of the Q and Z signal codes used by the military and civilian operators. The origins of CQ are French... I learned Morse code in the Army but never did voice. I was more educated in the classified codes used by the military of various countries, but surprisingly, some countries' military used a mix of Q&Zs and "secret" codes. About everyone used "CQ", however, to get conversations started and some also to end them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Q_and_Z_signals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CQ_(call)
"The letters CQ, when pronounced in French, resemble the first two syllables of sécurité, and were therefore used as shorthand for the word. It sounds also like the French "c'est qui?" which in English means "who's there?". In English-speaking countries, the origin of the abbreviation was popularly changed to the phrase "seek you" or, later, when used in the CQD distress call, "Calling all distress"."
"an amateur radio operator often makes a general call by transmitting CQ repeatedly (such as "CQ CQ CQ") so that other operators scanning for such calls are aided by the familiar rhythmic sound in quickly discriminating distant (weak signal) general callers from other traffic and spurious emissions. This technique allows the other operators to zero-in as close to the caller's center frequency using the human ear to fine-tune his transceiver before engaging the caller in a two-way communication."
Don't know much about amateur radio, but that is how cq was used in the military. Operators frequently changed frequencies during transmissions to prearranged freqs and when attempting to re-establish the conversation they used cq again which was an opportunity for intelligence agents to find them by quickly scrolling through the frequency bands listening for repeated "cq" calls. The sound of the transmitter and how the operators keyed their code often helped agents to re-acquire the conversation even if the conversation had already been re-established. How operators keyed the codes and the sound of the transmitter gave each operator a unique "voice".
Talking about Morse transmissions.... The bulk of military stuff was Morse or compressed burst transmission. Even the burst stuff started with Morse "cq" calls and some chatter to validate the connection which still gave intelligence agents a chance to identify and capture the burst transmissions which could be analyzed.
"Sk" was the code typically used to terminate Morse conversations. Don't know why "cq" was sometimes used. It may have been used to signal a frequency change or some other action.
Not sure if there is still a Morse requirement for a ham license. I recall that that requirement was often the hardest part for amateurs to master.
In amateur radio they use the phrase "7-3" to say goodbye or end communication.
And they have "No Code license" today. A lot of people have lost interest in Morse code, so they got rid of the license requirements awhile back.
My father had some fancy keyers and of course for contests he often used his code machine. An electronic device that sent your rogrammed Morse code message when you pushed the button. That way you could tune the signal in with both hands, which often required turning the antenna..
SK in amateur radio means Silent Key, meaning that member has passed away. For example W7BUN is a Silent Key.
Huh, well that is sure different than military use (was?). There are probably some dinosaur amateur radio operators still using it. I'll have to dig my shortwave radio out and see if I can find any Morse at all! Guessing it still has some commercial or military uses... It used to be common in commercial shipping. I never got interested in amateur radio but have known a few ham operators over the years.
Did a little research and it looks like satellites and the internet has killed most Morse transmission. Still some small usage in shipping. Probably still some old ex-military ham operators using it....
Another interesting thing dad had...old green monitor computer that ran packet radio..people think the internet is new...Hams been using packet radio since the 70s. That's what the internet was based on. Translates packets of information into text..
DARPA hosted a packet radio station at Ft Ord before 1976. It was active when I was stationed there in March of that year.
From what I understand..DARPA started looking at it in 1973, then jumped head over heels and worked on it. Hams came along around 1976 to 78 then finally got permission to use it, Darpa styled network..really the beginning of the internet.
I had dial up modems and a bulletin board I ran. All my friends did..forvour games.
Sounds about right. After I ETSed in August of 1976, I lost most of my contacts. CIA recruited me in 1980 (?) but I was still burnt out and bailed out part way through the process and went into biomedical electronics. One of my closest Army buddies was at Ft Meade
Oops! and he kept me somewhat in the loop until he died in 2001 from multiple agent orange related illnesses. He was a techy. I was involved in a lot of R&D for biomedical and aerospace research in the 1980s and at IBM in the early to mid 1990s and occasionally ran into folks who had similar MI backgrounds so heard "gossip", etc. There was an MI reserve unit in Seattle that tried to suck me into something they were doing in Central America in the mid 1980s but I bailed on that, too. Just developed an allergy to the military and TLAs. Not sure how confidential all of that stuff was. I used a lot of that early technology professionally and I remember some of it was proprietary. Caveman stuff now. Ramble, ramble.....