[Elecraft] Reaching across the chronological divide

Sat Dec 14 12:00:21 EST 2019

Hi Dave and All,

	I can't speak for the masses, but I can say what drew me into amateur radio.

	I was never drawn to ham radio to be able to talk to people in faraway places. Rather I had an early interest in science and technology.  Most of us here were born in an era where technology was simple and understandable.  Our technology was transparent in a sense.  Our table top radios typically contained five tubes.  TV's at the time were only about four to five times as complex.  In my young days I was absolutely fascinated when we bought a set of wired intercom phones.  My brother and I could magically talk between our bedrooms connected only by a small wire.  The concepts I learned in those days were small bite size lessons.  

	When I got my license and a used HW16 I began my lifetime journey of ham radio.  My telegraph key was one that I had pulled out of a garbage pile.  My antenna  was around 70 feet of wire strung between the chimney of our house and a telephone pole.  I built an antenna tuner using a single coil of wire and a variable capacitor. I was absolutely fascinated with CW.  The signals would magically appear from nowhere and I could respond to them.   When I wasn't on the radio I would pour over the HW16 manual and spend hours decoding each corner of its schematic.  

	When I was young and ham radio "found me" there were far fewer distractions than there are today.  We had real quiet time to fill with.   Simple things could catch our attention.  For the most part our parents never felt the need to entertain us 24 hours a day.  I spent many hours at the library reading and learning the basics of science and electronics.  Today the collection of books at the library are nearly useless.   Simplicity allowed me to focus and understand.  I would breakdown complex things and understand individual parts.  That skill set has traveled with me my entire life and helped me in my professional life as well. 

	First, no offence to Wayne and Eric, but radios today are FAR too complex for beginners.   I absolutely LOVE my KX radios, but I am in a different place than a beginner.  It seems that we are setting the expectations for new users based on our place in ham radio.  We are expecting new users to jump into DX, contesting, and things that require high end equipment.  How about giving new users a desire to understand radio and the equipment with fewer bells and whistles.  Today we buy appliances, turn the key and go. I think that is fine for someone who understands what they are doing.  But for a beginner is steps over the "falling in love phase".  I love my Elecraft radios because I understand what it took to create them.  I understand both the HW and SW engineering.  I understand how easy it makes things for me.  But that is secondary  to why I am fascinated with radio.  My fascination comes from knowing how it works and the people like Marconi that endured deafening sparks to get us here.  My fascination came from the incremental steps of my "radio" education. 

	Many hams will complain about our current sunspot cycle and say the lack of propagation discourages new users, to that I say BS.  When you first learn how to drive a car you do so in small steps.  You start with the family Junker, not an Indy car.  You don't drive the lower 48 states, but your local neighborhood, and typically in a school parking lot.  Most people average 45 to 55 mph, very few people will ever drive 150 or 200 mph.  When propagation works we talk far, when it's broke we don't.  That's life, and mostly physics.

	With ham radio we need to set expectations. This is NOT a cell phone, it will never be a cell phone.  Each tool  in the box has a different use.  Ham radio was never intended to provide universal communications, AT&T did that already. It can however provide for a fun hobby and occasionally emergency communications.  We should never approach new users and set the expectation that ham radio competes or will replace a phone, or the Internet.  We all grew up with phones, and it never replaced them for us.  We all grew up with phones and still enjoy ham radio.  Our phones could call anyone else on the planet, just like today.   (I laugh that people say the cost is "cheaper" to make calls today.  Sure, we had to pay higher long distance charges.  But our basic phone service was only 10$ to 20$ per month.  Try adding up an 800$ smart phone and the 100$ monthly voice and data charges, your internet and cable bill.  I think the telcos got the last laugh!)

	I think the thing that encourages me is to see the quality and quantity of DIY projects that exist today.   If you don't follow the tech blogs check out hackaday.  There are some seriously amazing individuals playing with technology and building really interesting things.  Many of these "hackers/makers" are people like us who love radio and technology.   I suspect that these people are our future if we don't run them off.

	And last...  The real thing that drew me to ham radio was  another ham, Russ Michaelson N7SM (SK 2019).  Russ and I meet at the University of Utah's surplus store.  Even though we had a 12 year age difference, Russ and I connected almost immediately and became lifelong friends.  I was in Junior high school and Russ was beginning a family when we meet.  >From Russ I learned about more about radio and electronics, and we had many adventures in the process.  I never remember Russ complaining about the ionosphere.  He built a magnificent basement "shack".  When he built his own 100 foot tower from scratch I climbed to the top to help set up and adjust antennas. (By then I was in my 20's, no child labor involved. :)   If we expect this hobby to continue into the future, we need to be the "Russ" in someone else's life.  We need to pass our love of radio to the next generation.  Just expecting someone to "be" interested and on their way after the exam will never happen.  Propagation will always change, we need to be the constant.

73

KA7FTP

Len

-----Original Message-----
From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of David Gilbert
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2019 9:37 PM
To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] Reaching across the chronological divide

This of course is a discussion that isn't likely to die before we do, but I really don't think that any significant portion of today's youth will ever look at amateur radio like we do.  I wish that weren't the case, but reality bites.

1.  The major lure of amateur radio for most of us was the ability to freely talk to faraway places.  Young people today can do that with FM quality and yet often they don't ... they text or chat via message groups and forums.

2.  Communicating today is license free, and while even now with today's lesser requirements getting an amateur radio license is maybe not a roadblock it's a nuisance to have to study for something that you don't otherwise care about.

3.  Effectively communicating today is far cheaper hardware-wise than for amateur radio, especially for long distances.

4.  Communicating today is independent of time of day or position in the sunspot cycle.

5.  A basic competency in amateur radio was once considered a stepping stone to a technical career.  That is hardly the case today.  In fact, I remember one manager of a test department in another company telling me he tried to avoid hiring hams because they talked about it too much on the job.

One thing I do believe has carryover appeal is the spirit of competition.  Humans in general always seem keen to compete at almost anything ... from eating hot dogs to running to vicariously watching football to quilting to barbeque.  Young people today have video games that provide a FAR richer competitive environment than any ham radio contest (I do both, by the way), and I've always thought that one way to drum up interest in ham radio is to develop a contest format that has similar elements.  Ham radio contests are essentially endurance events that involve independent action throughout the contest with the comparison occurring at the end, and often weeks or months later.  Video games require different but otherwise comparable proficiency (both mental and physical) but involve real time counter moves to any opponent.  The closest we hams come to offsetting somebody we view as competition is to steal their frequency or QRM them.  I'm not at all suggesting that we do any such thing, but a contest where we could take some action that subtracted from somebody else's score is the kind of thing I'm talking about.  And no, I don't know how to do that either, but it illustrates what I'm talking about.

It's not any surprise to me that contesting is one of the few surviving ham radio activities with high participation.  Even ragchewing has practically died out, and if anyone disputes that take a look at how much time you spend each week reading email reflectors versus being on the air (other than in a contest).

I'm not really sure what Wayne was referring to here, and maybe he implied that same thing that I'm saying, but we aren't going to bring young folks into the hobby by trying to convince them that the same things that appealed to us 40 years ago are going to appeal to them. This isn't a communication or publicity problem.  In spite of the comments from hams I've seen over the years, most young people pretty much know the general framework of ham radio and they've simply rejected it in favor of other things.  There are always a few exceptions, of course, but I'd bet $100 that the bulk of those young people who pop up online or in QST as shining examples of young blood in the hobby are nowhere to be found two years later.

If for any reason we want young folks to embrace the hobby, the hobby itself is going to have to adapt.  That most of us seem unable to understand that fact is probably another facet of the problem ... we're old and inflexible (in both appearance and in fact), which doesn't help the image of the hobby one wit.  The pictures from Dayton or any other hamfest have the same appeal as if they were taken at a Lawrence Welk concert.

I guarantee that those of us who are still above ground five years from now will be having this same discussion, and it won't be because we weren't persuasive enough.

73,
Dave   AB7E

On 12/13/2019 7:24 PM, Wayne Burdick wrote:
> Hams of a certain age, including yours truly (first licensed in 1971) recall their excitement on joining the hobby: there was the promise of contact with faraway places, collection of vivid QSL cards, mastery of esoteric equipment, synchrony with the rhythms of Morse code, and the crafting of antennas to harness action at a distance.
>
> Most of us still feel that spark, occasionally--some on a daily basis--experiencing the wonder all over again.
>
> While the accoutrements and equipage of youth have evolved over the decades, their DNA has not. Somewhere, nestled between the genetic codes for half-pipe snowboarding, Instagram, Juul, and ambient house, there's a dormant sequence for the Radio Art waiting to be stirred.
>
> Is there a Battle Royale for ham radio? A tactical RPG?
>
> What is our sorcerer's stone? Our rap?
>
> Will Gen-Z or Gen-Alpha tickle the ionosphere, and if so...why?
>
> To hand our batons across the chronological divide, we'll need empathetic, open-ended inquiry.
>
> 73,
> Wayne
> N6KR
>

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