THE HAREC WHO DISCOVERED THAT GROUNDING KILLS ANTENNAS

Every club has that guy. Fresh license in his pocket, volume knob of confidence already maxed out, while the RF knowledge meter still sits stubbornly on zero. You mention “open antennas” and he squints like you just recited Shakespeare in Klingon: “What do you mean by open antennas?”

You answer, slow and gentle: “Antennas that aren’t DC grounded.” Heads nod. Coffee slurps. Then he drops the classic: “But if you ground them… they’re shorted! They can’t work anymore!”

The room freezes. Someone fumbles a coax connector. A handheld reboots out of sympathy. In that moment you’re no longer debating physics — you’re auditing a belief system where grounding is a funeral and RF is a ghost that refuses to haunt conductive metal.

Of course, anyone awake in class knows DC grounding bleeds static and tames lightning, while RF happily rides the impedance path. But try telling that to someone convinced the green wire is basically a priest giving last rites to his dipole.

THE CYNIC’S REALITY

The loudest voices often carry the thinnest notebooks. Explaining RF isolation here is like teaching a goldfish calculus — very wet, not very productive.

ALTERNATIVE CAREER PATH

Maybe radio just isn’t his sport. Some folks are better off where “grounded” really does mean the end — like potted plants or unplugged toasters.

At least those don’t demand an explanation of why electrons happily dance at RF while DC quietly takes the fire escape. And the plants? They’ll never argue back.