Does Ham Radio Need to Rebrand?

I don't think that "kids" taken as a socio-economic group have changed that much over the last fifty or a hundred years. Most remain as thick as a pair of planks laid end-to-end while a few are seriously interested in how things work - and I see no reason to believe that the ratio of one group to the other has significantly changed. But I do believe that the focus of interest in the technology oriented group has changed - away from electronics towards IT. In my youth, access to computers was severely limited. Yes, they existed, but they were mainframes costing millions and filling one or two floors of the office block - simply outside the reach of mere mortals. I was one of those technology nerds and our focus was on physical technology - electronics, telescopes for astronomy, chemistry and mechanical engineering. I was interested in all the above, but electronics became my focus building my own hifi from discrete components and subsequently getting interested in short wave listening. But this was in the days when long range radio communication still had a WOW factor - long before the internet. We did not even have a telephone in our house - we had to walk to the call box at the end of the street to make a call. The first communications satellites were just going up and it was still something very exceptional to see a live TV broadcast from another country - fuzzy, black and white, and usually cut short when the satellite dropped below the horizon. In that context, my first QSO with a station on the other side of the world had a very big WOW factor!

That has largely gone now. There are still times when I'm talking to a DX station and pause to reflect on the fact that we are communicating over a range of thousands of miles by radiating less energy than the lightbulb on the shack ceiling does, but that means nothing to my son who did not study physics at university! For him, and most modern technology nerds, the focus is IT and the internet. I'm really not sure how you make ham radio more relevant to them...

With regard to your second paragraph - "Lessons on geography and navigation are still helped along with talking on a radio over long distances." - you are certainly correct there, though I'm not sure that you can use it to get people into ham radio. One afternoon last year, I was tuning round 20m and found a station being operated by an obviously young girl calling CQ. I replied and discovered that she was about twelve years old from somewhere in Eastern Europe and was operating her father's station under his supervision. She had been set a high-school project to write an essay on the differences in lifestyles between different countries and her father had suggested that she should research it on-air. We talked for several minutes with her asking questions about what kind of house I lived in, what sort of job I did, what hobbies I had and what the other members of my family did. I carried on listening after we signed off and heard her ask similar questions of other stations distributed around Europe and the rest of the world. I wonderful use of amateur radio and a great introduction for a young person, I thought!

Martin (G8FXC)

 

Has it really been THAT long ago?

 

THAT'S IT! I always knew I was a wierdo, but never understood precisely what it was about continuous wave communications that appeals to me so damn much. Thank you for articulating it so well.

 

We always hear this "use it or lose it" littany of fear in amateur radio. I can certainly understand it in regard to VHF and up, but tell me, who is really after the HF or MF spectrum? AM radio stations are being dismantled daily, the tower sections going to rich hams by the look of things on QRZ brag bio's, does anybody in the general public today listen to SW or even know what a short wave radio is? When was the last time you visited someones place and they gathered around the livingroom "set" to listen to the BBC? And given that, the same trend that has befallen AM radio is following suit in the shotwave broadcast arena as far as I can tell. Millimeter waves are all the rage with the huge adsorption ironically turning out to be a bandwidth boon to industry and subscriber alike via the advent of micro sized cells (God help our own biological cells) so who is really after spectrum in the HF area today? I'd really like to know.

 

PLEASE read the prior posts. The future of HF (includes) channel-wise and digital and for the most part, not ham radio to the present extent.

Otherwise there is needless repetition if you merely quote--AND DON'T READ...

Thank you.

73
Chip W1YW

 

Chip, you made me laugh with this one. In the engineering school where I work the maths and engineering (particularly computer and elecrical) halls are a sea of asian faces. I'm not being racist by that comment, it is just a reflection of the greed of the university and how foreign tuitions are allowed to be outrageously high. Despite requirements for minimum levels of domestic students, the top tier domestic students represent a small fraction of the actual population there. The PRC juggernaut is the reality buddy, you are so right. Which reminds me, I need to brush up on my Mandarin. Sadly the kids are being told in grade school that STEM is the path to that high standard of living that all the sheeple are groomed to crave, but by the time they realize the bag they are holding is empty, they are so far down the road of debt, there is no way out. The only radio they can afford is big brother's tracker they carry on their hip. But never fear...there's an app for that.

 

Yeah, I don't believe that one about channel wise digital, with the way HF propagation works.....I don't see that happening.

 

PRC is doing what they should do--taking bright people and leading their citizens in growth of science and technology progress. They have a plan; they are executing. The fact that they have a 5:1+ advantage in putting out scientists and engineers is a sobering reality.

What The US needs is to understand what WE need to do to LEAD for OUR citizens. The present US STEM initiatives are far too nebulous to meet those needs, because the needs are so poorly defined.

Ham radio has distinct and proven benefits as a STEM initiative as the entry barrier (in the US) is defined by an exam, not an age or a degree. That provides a great entry for those who may or may not be in a position to pursue a path through an advanced degree, for example.

73
Chip W1YW

 

Well even if you are right on that, and maybe you are, it will be argued that these IOT transmitters with their low power and inefficient antennas using brief and very narrow transmissions will only result in a slight increase of the noise floor and therefore not really interfere with those amateurs anyways, and if the industry lobbyists are good and there is enough money behind it the argument will fly regardless of us and our little history.

 

There will be upwards of a billion IOT machine to machine systems in a decade. Almost all will be low bit rate and very low duty cycle. They will be channelized and 'QSO' much like FT8 does today. Many will use HF. But even then, with high per-channel usage, the shear numbers will require many, many channels at HF.

Ironically, HF was heading towards an automatic link cognitive radio-share-the-spectrum future, but FT8 and other digital modes showed an alternative and more cost effective path.

73
Chip W1YW

 

It will be pretty ironic if it turns out Joe Taylor put the kiss of death on amateur radio.

 

It was 75 watts, and included 80 meters (3700 - 3750).

73,
Jim

EARTH: LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT​

 

Joe did no such thing.

Joe added a new and exciting option to telecommunication modes. It was a brilliant effort amongst him and his colleagues.

How that option is USED is clearly not always up to the inventor.

In 2017, I did not imagine that the bulk of contacts, especially on HF, would happen via FT8. Did anyone?

The fact that it works so well --for what it does--means it has attracted interest outside of ham radio. This is hardly the first time that has happened with new technology, and, indeed, is part of the mission of Part 97 in the U.S.

73
Chip W1YW

 

Reband just the no coders. In fact, put them in 27 MHz.

 

Demographics aside, the China:USA population ratio is approximately 4.341:1.