As ARRL president, [Rick Roderick, K5UR] spends a significant amount of time proselytising the hobby. He has a standard talk about amateur radio that involves tales gleaned from his many decades as a licence holder, and features QSL cards from rare DX contacts to show how radio amateurs talk all over the world.
He’s delivered this talk countless times, and is used to a good reception from audiences impressed with what can be done with radio. But when he delivered it to a group of young people, as Southgate ARC reports, he was surprised to see a lack of interest from his audience, to whom DX or contesting just don’t cut it when they have grown up with the pervasive Internet. Writing in the 2016 ARRL Annual Report, he said:
“Change generally doesn’t come easy to us. But when I looked out at that group of young faces and saw their disinterest in traditional ham pursuits, I realized that I had to change. We have to change. It won’t come easy, but it’s essential that we get to work on it now.”
If you were to profile a typical group of radio amateurs, it would not be difficult to see why [K5UR] found himself in this position. It might be an unflattering portrait for some amateurs, but it’s fair to say that amateur radio is a hobby pursued predominantly by older more well-off men with the means to spend thousands of dollars on commercial radios. It is also fair to say that this is hardly a prospect that would energize all but the most dedicated of youthful radio enthusiasts. This is not a new phenomenon, where this is being written it was definitely the case back in the days when they were issuing G7 callsigns, for instance.
Were Hackaday to find ourselves in the position of advising the ARRL on such matters, we’d probably suggest a return to the roots of amateur radio, a time in the early 20th century when it was the technology that mattered rather than the collecting of DXCC entities or grid squares, and an amateur had first to build their own equipment rather than simply order a shiny radio before they could make a contact. Give a room full of kids a kit-building session, have them make a little radio. And lobby for construction to be an integral part of the licensing process, it is very sad indeed that where this is being written at least, the lowest tier of amateur radio licence precludes home-made radio equipment. Given all that, why should it be a surprise that for kids, amateur radio just isn’t exciting?
We’ve shown you some fantastic amateur radio builds over the years. If you have a youngster with an interest in radio, show them a BitX transceiver, or the world of QRP.
Header image: enixii. [CC BY 2.0]. We hope these snoozing kids aren’t in the middle of a lecture on amateur radio.
About a year ago I sold my Two Kenwood handhelds. I really did not want to, but there was no one to talk with on the central coast. Maybe occasionally, you could hear some chatter on one of the bands while auto scanning, but it was rare. When the batteries died, I got rid of them for good.. I thought about buying a new one, but after 10 seconds, I changed my mind.
However, I must admit, I am surprised to see so many replies.
I find that too many people rely on band condition web site before the even bother to turn on the radio or go as far as to putout a CQ a call. A few months ago the band condition. web sites said the bands were dead and 20 meters total dead. But I tune up on twenty to here a station in Caracas calling CQ, where do I live? Cornwall England, I went back to him and had quite along QSO, when I signed with him the band was alive with stations calling him, but the band condition sites still said the band was dead. We radio hams should stop complaining about the hobby being dead, stop looking at the internet band condition web site or the DX cluster and get on the band and put out a CQ you may well be pleasantly surprised. Len G8LXI Cornwall England.
Who is the original author of this post? Appears it’s also published here, authored by Paul Jacob Evans: https://pauljacobevans.wordpress.com/2017/08/05/amateur-radio-just-isnt-exciting/
Jenny List is the original author. That site has put the first couple paragraphs up and then linked back to hackaday on the read more link.
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Yes, I could buy a radio and make contacts all over the world via a network of repeaters.
Ideally that radio would allow digital transmissions, and the ability to send photos and data.
Even cooler would be that it would be able to decode many data formats, and contact other digital networks like the internet, get weather reports, and send email.
That radio would be called a “cell phone”
Ham Radio is like listening to albums on a turntable, or writing your friends letters with a fountain pen.
You can do it, but it’s more nostalgic than useful.
“[1] Give a room full of kids a kit-building session, have them make a little radio. [2] And lobby for construction to be an integral part of the licensing process”
In my opinion, your observations are correct, but your solution is terribly unobtainable.
1) They are not interested in building a radio, and how would you implement this? Where would they do this? Who would pay for it? When would they do it?
2) Requiring construction for a license is so unrealistic I find it hard to make a serious comment.
Sadly, no one has a solution. Ham radio as it had been has already died. Ham may continue to morph into a buy an off-the-shelf stand-alone communications device or one that plugs into your computer’s USB or links to your network. It is progress.
Been a ham for about 13 years. ham radio is boring. Sorry. (After repeating call 5 times because they can’t copy it) Roger! You are 59 here 73! Wow amazing 59 huh! Or we can sit around and talk about medical problems or the weather. How about a net where nobody has a message to relay and someone is frying hamburger? Sorry, it’s a boring hobby. It’s for extroverts who don’t go outside and love to hear themselves talk. Just my opinion. The digital modes are interesting and building antennas is fun, but the conversation sucks.
Are you kidding? Advocating for the ability to build kit radios to be a licensing requirement? Advocating QRP (I assume on HF) to new hams? I can’t think of any better ways to DECREASE interest in the hobby. Some people are thrilled with the idea of being able to talk to others around the world and just want to be able to do that, not have to actually build the radio first. (What about people with disabilities?) And after building a 5 watt QRP rig in some kit-building class or session, many new hams will become frustrated when they find out they can’t be heard and give up on the hobby. Many younger people are gamers and are used to being able to chat to fellow-players worldwide over the Internet. How do you compete with that?
You mention elsewhere that the idea getting a ham radio licence for disaster preparedness is “losing its spark.” I disagree. I think this would be a good pitch for newbies getting their licenses. Think: how do you chat with your friends on the ‘net when it’s down? All it takes is for your ISP to roll out a bad patch to their routers, or a “fiber-seeking backhoe” to dig up and sever a fiber-optic cable, or even just forgetting to pay your bill to put you out of Internet access for days, never mind a natural disaster. There exist things like Meshtastic that can be set up by hams to provide a local or regional network over the amateur radio frequencies, which if widerange enough could eventually hit a node that has Internet connectivity and has a gateway set up. I’m thinking of the European HAMNET which covers much of western Europe: basically an Internet connectivity back-up system.