These views paint a very bleak picture. I am trying to find some optimism in a sea of depression. Not all Amateur radio ops were 'elite', red hot finals, common mode current, tvi and audio breakthrough still existed. In my experience there are very few amateurs who actually help and share experience to develop others. Much of the info posted to internet is incomplete and one error leading to another with most stuff moving these days to the hideous facebook platform... once its gone to that forget it. I use morse, it doesn't make me a better person... it does allow me to ident feint cw beacons or know if somebody is talking to me (if they aren't too fast). Some of the morse contests are frankly as insane as that 'Pokemon' mobile phone game ... as in ... people blundering everywhere head down looking at a phone ' gotta catch em all!' .... for what? a totally inaccurate default 599 and serial No. report not even Pikachu or whatever. Monster antennas and about a kilowatt don't make amateur radio better either. If we follow your argument about tech skills then they are even more likely to be a cause of more problems and offence to non amateurs and amateurs trying to find their way with less. I have struggled, and I am still struggling, to find an HF antenna that I can fit into my home ground that will comply with the latest UK regs that is workable in an enjoyable way against overpowered operators, vdsl interferrence (I can't fix the telecoms system) and lax import constraints on garbage 'value engineered' electrical products that have filtering removed or have skirted regs to use some switching that splatters everything... solar panel inverters etc. So right now I and I think many others are struggling to find our way through and now covid has all but crushed opportunities to meet, socialise and learn new things.
Now personally, I hate Baofengs, I find them difficult to use and I suspect that they do not use the best quality components. But if that's all someone can afford and they find enjoyment in talking on their local repeater then I don't see anything wrong with that. In most cases it eventually eads them to explore further in the hobby. If it weren't for the few M7 Foundation licences experimenting with their Baofengs, then 2m FM in my area where I live would be completely dead. Nobody wants to play radio on 2m anymore. I've called CQ once or twice on 2m every other day on average for the past two months. Only yesterday did I get a reply and I've been calling since 15th May. And no, there is nothing wrong with my antenna. The person who responded was a fella who just passed his Foundation and was talking on a Baofeng. Good luck to him I say. Nothing wrong with it in my humble opinion! I did suggest to him that I find HF much more active and he should look into it.
The problem is not who what do with HT's. Children run and play with it, builders communicate with each other, truckers communicate on CB. All there is radio, but no one calls them radio amateurs, right?
We call everyone with an amateur radio licence a radio amateur because they have had to sit an exam to obtain the most basic licence. That requires curiosity and learning in the first place. The difference is they are still interested in how radio works and many of them start out just with a Baofeng. We need to encourage them, not tell them they aren't radio amateurs just because they bought a radio. For those not particularly interested in radio and how it works, we have 11m CB or PMR 446 in the UK. Foundation licence brings privileges of 10 watts on the amateur bands. Not too much power so as to create a nuisance but enough power to have fun and do what they want to enjoy which is radio. Actually, in some circumstances, 10 watts isn't enough because of the scarcity of other licencees on the band. Very difficult to reach other hams with less than 10 watts in my area for instance. They live too far apart! I only know a handful of local amateurs who I can reach on 2m FM and I need 50 watts to reach one of those people in particular. It saddens me that there are people who want to discourage others because they haven't yet acquired the same level of knowledge or interest. Same with the old photographer attitude: " you're not a photographer just because you bought a camera." True, they might not be a "good" photographer, but where else do you start out? We weren't all born Ansel Adams. This is also why we have different licence levels in the UK. The kid with the Baofeng isn't allowed the full 400 watts yet but he has the option to go there by upgrading the licence. Everyone with a licence is a radio amateur. Unfortunately, the hobby is dying through lack of encouragement from existing hams.
This is what we lawyers call Legal positivism. The laws are not always fair. Therefore, we were initially taught that there is not any necessary relation between law and morality or justice, that is, between law as it is and as it ought to be. You are absolutely right, but the reality is that simple things are not about ham radio. My many years of experience in attracting people to this hobby, starting with cheap HT's, has shown a complete failure. We made a repeater, taught people to memorize callsigns and make QSO, but people quickly got bored with it and it’s good if one person out of 50 in a couple of years at least continued to communicate on a repeater with someone from the original group. None of them got interested in short waves. Nobody wanted to figure out how and why the antenna and radio work. Some of the vanities even bought expensive radios like the Icom 7000, but then they sold them with regret for wasted money. As a result, the licenses did not make any of the radio operators a radio amateur.
@G0KDT I am getting the impression that you are younger than me, perhaps 15 or even 20 years. Then you had no opportunity to live through the final years when most amateurs actually belonged to an elite. When there were no "no-coders" and the exams were quite hard and actually tested knowledge, although the present-day UK exams are less watered-down in comparison with too many other countries. I may repeat myself, but in the 50s and 60s did a majority of the Swedish radio amateurs, about 70%, belong to the educated classes and 2/3 had technical professions, were conscript or career military personnel or students at Grammar Schools or universities. I am old enough to remember the late 60s when radio amateurs were known for the good behaviour and their good standing with the Authorities. A good standing as a subject was even actually required in order to be considered for the grant of a licence. If you have had trouble with "the law" or was considered "unreliable", no licence. As amateurs behaved as adults, whining and complaining were practically unheard of, as it was considered to be very "bad form" and could damage the standing. When the national society addressed the regulator, it used a very courteous language. But already in the early-70s, the national society fell for the "CB appeasement strategy" in order to increase their membership against the will of the existing members, which started the "slippery slope" which we are on today. When the society finally became aware of the detrimental effects of lowering the exam standards in the mid-70s, they petitioned the regulator to make the exams harder again, t0 which the regulator replied; "You got what you wanted, so why complain now..." 73/ Karl-Arne SM0AOM
my thinking is more toward the outback stations (cow/sheep-type, not radio-type, stations) and how they network. do the locals in their area use cb or 2m simplex? and how are air ambulances summoned? do all critter-stations have a mast up high? this is a fascinating subject. all i know of australia is 'the thorn birds', 'miss fisher mysteries', and 'priscilla, queen of the australian desert'. maybe 'merry christmas mr. lawrence'. well, there was 'fool's gold', too. and the seekers and daddy cool, and the beegees. AND aussies have no reverse gear in combat. they might move to the side to go around, but NEVER back up. anyway, do they chit-chat during the day or is station life too hard for chit-chatting? i am ignorant.
Well you are probably correct on age, but age is no determination of 'elitism'. The 50's and 60's were not times when we had either the population or levels of technology and its associated introduction of QRM that such a population proliferate now. That was my point. Technology progression has made innumerable life benefits possible. The relative importance of issues to society will change based on what are perceived by those in power as getting greater benefits for the majority unless they are of a deviant nature. To that end Amateur Radio sadly pales into insignificance vs the likes of 3G, 4G and 5G internet tech for instance. There is more money to be made from licences and product in such areas too. My guess is that there may be a few elite out there that do better operating radio in the current operating environment, but I'd hazard a pretty certain guess that these days they are younger and are using modern tech to overcome the limitations they face. I am old enough (retired) to know that there comes a point when trying to follow some of the new technical theories no longer has the same dedication. The benefits of youth. Hi. None of this means that I wouldn't like things to be simpler or that good operating manners and procedure don't matter.
I am a board member of the Nordic Radio Society, NRS, which is a cooperative body between industry, academia, regulators and the user communities such as the military. NRS arranges conferences, is a participant in various consultations about new ruling and in general tries to coordinate efforts to increase the participation of younger people in radio engineering education and development. A recurring topic at the board meetings is the general difficulty of interesting people in the more traditional forms of radio, which still are in some demand among the users. The very few that chose "radio" as the subject in their MSEE studies almost invariably go the paths of 4G and 5G. Radio generalists are almost impossible to find nowadays. As a few other members also are radio amateurs, among them two professors emeriti in space physics and signal processing, the subject of amateur radio is sometimes touched upon. It becomes very clear that amateur radio is regarded as an anachronism which has failed to attract bright young people any more, compared to what it did a few decades ago. "Yesteryear", amateur radio was seen as an asset to society, not only because of the recruiting base for conscript radio operators and technical personnel in the Armed Forces, but also a training ground for "hands-on radio". The exam standards were quite high, and there was a selection process. However, the decline of quality have made the Authorities quite sceptic about the actual value of amateur radio. If you speak to representatives for the spectrum regulators, the EMC and EMF responsible or anyone else such as building planning councils, who have had the misfortune of having to deal with radio amateurs, their general views are that radio amateurs are a bunch of quite aged whiners and complainers who demand a lot but give nothing in return. 73/ Karl-Arne SM0AOM
I know that a millionaire friend of mine from Ireland really wanted to hide from justice in Australia) I also really liked the films "Last Cab to Darwin" or "Rams" But age sets the criteria for determining this. Because it was a hobby and is becoming a hobby again, and not part of the training of future radio operators for the army, etc. Horse riding and fishing with a rod are also anachronistic, but people continue to do it. They just need to not stop them from doing it ...
It may very well be too late. If amateur radio is not considered "worth saving" by those that have its ultimate fate in their hands, it will not be "saved", even if we could succeed in bringing the Morse requirement back and tightened up the exam standards in general. Since 1947, amateur radio has "rested on old laurels", and capitalised on its good-will from WW2. But in the 75 years that have passed, the views of how the radio spectrum should be regulated and distributed have changed fundamentally, spectrum has gone from a tightly Government regulated common resource to a commodity that is bought, sold and traded for monetary gains. Fortunately, there have been no concerted attacks on the spectrum privileges - yet. A major difference between amateur radio and other anachronisms is that unlike steam trains, sailboats or rod fishing it actively competes for a fundamentally limited natural resource which also has an immense commercial value. It needs an extremely good justification for its continued existence, and frankly, I am unable to formulate such a justification. In order to justify continued spectrum privileges, it needs to be shown beyond doubt that amateur radio does offer something that other competitors for spectrum do not provide. Some perspectives about the real value of the spectrum privileges enjoyed by amateur radio are that the total spectrum space for maritime mobile radio services in the heyday of HF was about the same as what amateur radio had world-wide, so a multi-billion shipping industry had its global communications needs satisfied in a comparable share of a natural resource as a small number of hobbyists. This would have been completely impossible if the "markets" had been the deciding factor for allowing spectrum access. Instead, amateur radio had powerful "friends in high places" that protected existing, and even allowed increased spectrum allocations. Now, however, have those friends that mostly were qualified scientists and engineers or signals officers retired and are replaced by lawyers and "bean-counters". These categories have no nostalgic feelings whatsoever about the value of preserving anachronisms, and only look into "the bottom line". Amateur radio is in a similar situation as the radio scientific community, which has faced increasing pressure on the small spectrum privileges it has. In some cases, commercial pressure on spectrum and the inability of deregulated spectrum authorities to protect them have resulted in very expensive scientific projects gone worthless. However, the scientific community still has considerable political influence. A Nobel Prize looks good to the voters... My own views are that amateur radio is back to a similar political situation that it faced in the mid/late-1930s. Commercial pressure and increasing spectrum demands for propaganda broadcasts would eventually have pressed amateur radio off the map, but instead the Allied victory in WW2 saved us. A major difference then and now is that amateur radio could show its competence and that amateurs lived up to high standards. Today, standards have declined, and worse, the constant whining, complaining and bickering have reached the eyes and ears of the regulators. They see absolutely no "point" in actively preserving something that provides only aggravation and nothing else in return. Considering the age profiles, a major portion of current "first-world" radio amateurs will be dead within one or two decades, and will not be missed by the regulators. It is a very far stretch to expect them to actively promote a growth in numbers with their experiences and the commercial pressures as the background. 73/ Karl-Arne SM0AOM
I strongly doubt that. Even medium and short wave broadcasting is getting smaller and smaller. IMO the commercial value of the HF portion of the spectrum is only decreasing. UHF is of course under pressure, but judging by its activity, it is not very interesting even for amateurs ...
Please note that this was written in the 'past tense'. Today, HF use is in a general decline, much due to the globally increasing man-made interference problems. If not stopped, RFI will make HF unusable for all user categories. 73/ Karl-Arne SM0AOM
Also, do not forget that they are significant only in the immediate vicinity of objects of human activity. It is worth leaving the city and the RFI does not interfere at all. Unless, of course, you do not carry them with you) Therefore, the main is interest of people to do this. Perhaps their number will significantly decrease, but there will be those who are really interested in it.
