Before I was a ham, I was a "car guy" and still am, to some extent. My two favorite monthly publications are QST and Road and Track, in that order. In Road and Track, I like Peter Egan's column. He writes a folksy column every month, from his home in Wisconsin. He restored an E-type Jaguar, my favorite car ever, so I think very highly of him.

I got back from Christmas vacation and found the attached article in my new Road & Track. I haven't any copyright authority to reprint this, so PLEASE don't send it anywhere, but I thought you would be interested in reading it; it has some strong parallels to Amateur Radio today. It is about soap box derby cars, and how there isn't enough of the three T's in kids today to build them the way they used to. The three Ts are "Time, Tools and Talent".

This article really hit me. Two months ago, when I drove my son Ashton and his two friends home from a soccer game, one of the boys had an old BMW in the school parking lot. It was a real wreck, and when we got back, he realized that he had left the lights on in his car. I had jumper cables in my Tahoe, as I always do, so I knew this would be no problem at all, but I didn't say anything, because I wanted to see how the three boys, all smart prep school kids, would solve the problem, working together. They failed miserably. And I realized at that moment that I had failed as a parent, also, because all three boys, including my own, had no idea how to jump a battery, much less jump start a car! I had to explain the entire process to them, because their best plan was to call a tow truck. Since then, I have given Ashton a crash course (no pun intended) in auto mechanics.

A few weeks ago, I was in Delaware at the Punkin Chunkin' competition, with the Sandy Spring Friends' School team. They had a trebouchet which launched a 5 pound pumpkin about 480 feet. The year before, the team (mostly different students) had built a very competitive one that launched the pumpkin about 690 feet. The students designed and built it. I talked to the Physics teacher most of the day, and he lamented that none of the kids knew how to use tools. They were OK at designing the device and calculating thrust, etc. using computers and formulas, but they couldn't build the darn thing because they didn't know how to use tools anymore. He had to coach them in the use of the tools. This was an extracurricular activity, but the "time" limitations were dealt with for this team by incorporating the design of the trebouchet in the applied physics class curriculum.

Anyway, I am beginning to think that the problem that Amateur Radio has with growth, at least among young people, is due to the missing three Ts. Note that, in the attached article, the solution that the Soap Box Derby arrived at was to offer a car kit that can be assembled in 4 1/2 hours or less, because kids now don't have time for hobbies anymore, or a "slow, evolving craft project", and because suburban garages no longer have tools in them, or people who know how to use them. This seems their equivalent to our concern about "dumbing down" Amateur Radio. But it works for them, because it is a matter of survival, and they don't seem to have any other solutions.

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