Gaps in my knowledge

Sometimes I feel a complete fraud: people drop me emails and ask me questions and I am completely at a loss how to answer. The reason is there are an awful lot of things that I should know about that I don't. As an example, PIC programming: many of the things I want to do, like make a simple VLF frequency generator with FSK keying could probably be done very easily with a PIC, but I have never, ever, used a PIC and certainly never programmed one. There are whole areas of circuit design in which I'm very weak, for example digital logic, microprocessors etc.  Even my RF knowledge is frankly far from expert.  In my professional life I managed to get promoted into management roles where my "hands on" RF skills were not an embarrassment! You'd be surprised how many managers in RF jobs are not actually that hot at RF design.  Mind you, it helps to have a "jizz" (instinctive feel) for RF and I did (and still do) have this.

The reason I raise this is to give others hope. Even without knowing too much a lot can be done and we are never too old to learn new tricks. There are far too many things to know about to be experts in everything and the best we mortals can do is try our best in a limited area. This is why I concentrate on simple HF and low VHF QRP projects, optical and VLF work which I can get my head around. I'll leave the complex stuff to people far better than me.

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At some point I may have a go at PIC programming but writing software was never my strong point. Neither was maths for that matter. Talking about PICs, if I wanted to have a go at PIC programming what do people recommend for going about it? What is the best (simple please) book and what is the best development kit on which to try out the programmed devices?

RF skill levels

In my professional life I interviewed many graduates aspiring to become RF engineers. Very few, in recent years, had what I would call "the knowledge". By this I mean a "gut instinct" for RF that does not come from an academic course, important though this aspect is.  Rather, this "jizz" comes by living and breathing RF through building RF things yourself, however simple. A great many 2:1 graduates in communications electronics knew almost nothing about RF, had never touched a soldering iron ever and were rejected. In all honesty I believe I could sense who would make a good RF engineer within 2 minutes of the interviews starting.

Today I received a request from a Spanish amateur who professed (more or less), "I`ve a problem. I know nothing about electronics and would be unable to build the SAQ converter on your website." He then offered to pay me to build and ship the converter to him. Surely, a radio amateur in ANY country should have learnt basic RF skills as part of his training in preparation for his licence? At the most basic level the understanding may not be deep, but how can a radio amateur really not know how to put together a basic circuit?

In the UK we have a growing, and very serious, issue with poorly educated science and engineering graduates who are simply not coming out of universities with the skills needed to start work in industry. One answer was the sandwich course in which young A-level students were accepted on a company training scheme that married "on the job" skills training with educational training, usually to HND or degree level. People spotted young, with real RF "jizz" (easily judged in interviews) usually went on to become the best engineers we had.