[Elecraft] Reaching across the chronological divide

[Ron Genovesi]

     OK Folks
  I’ve stayed on this Mailing list for tech info.  While I got rid of my K3S I still have my KPA-1500. But you people have just become way  too strange for me. (And to do that you have to take a giant step over what  anyone considers  normal ) I’ll get my info from the website.  I’m out of here and off this Mailing list. 

     Ron Genovesi
     n3eta at coastside.net





> On Dec 14, 2019, at 6:54 PM, David Gilbert <xdavid at cis-broadband.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> Completely true ... all of it.
> 
> 73,
> Dave  AB7E
> 
> 
> 
> On 12/14/2019 7:46 PM, EricJ wrote:
>> We're missing the point here somehow. Siri's answer should have been "The best way to contact Helen is to pick up your phone and call her."
>> 
>> Anything else is pretty much a waste of time and resources just to talk to Helen. Seriously, there's a sizable investment in specialized equipment to make contact via AMSAT or whatever. The contact is set up for them. Then Jon and Helen wait to be told when the link is ready. If that's worth doing and will attract young people, then just shoot me. It sounds terminally boring.
>> 
>> Making that investment in specialized equipment can't be justified as utilitarian communication because it's expensive and inefficient. If the point is to contact your friends any time you want to, they are already doing that with a half a dozen reliable instant technologies all accessible from the same smartphone. I don't get where ham radio comes in to solve a problem they have already solved. Certainly not with a system that requires waiting 15 minutes for a satellite to get in position, and a Cupertino Robot to set up the call.
>> 
>> I don't have the answer to attracting young people to a rapidly changing hobby in an even more rapidly changing world. The aspects of the hobby that attracted many of us was the sheer magic of radio itself. We weren't attracted to it because it let us contact our friends. Even then we had the telephone for that. We were attracted to the magic. Nine times out of ten, the communication part was "599 OM PSE QSL".
>> 
>> I always heard how DX contacts would allow me to learn about other cultures. Actually, it did. After exchanging signal reports, I'd look up their city with an atlas or encyclopedia. But I learned zip on the air. A few California Kilowatts could hog a DX station, and chit chat for a few minutes, and did because they could. But the rest of us never got beyond the basic exchange and fought like hell for that. But it was magic so it didn't matter that it wasn't all that practical.
>> 
>> The magic that attracted us is gone. Maybe there's new magic to be found, but it's different magic that most of us with 30-70 years in the hobby won't understand...and probably won't like. We are the wrong people to even be considering answers but anyone expecting to make a living from the hobby will have to find that new magic. It ain't instant communication and it ain't the ham radio equivalent of retro turntables.
>> 
>> Eric KE6US
>> 
>> ex-K1DCK, WA6YCF, WB2PVW
>> 
> 
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