Issue 30: Problem Solving for the Amateur Radio Operator

Issue 30 discusses the whole topic of creativity and problem solving, and focuses on the big question of "How Can Ham Radio Survive the Next 10-20 Years?" The Edward deBono approach to "Six Thinking Hats" has worked for scientists and engineers who have revolutionized technology since the publication of the book in the late 1980's. It can be used for large or small problems . . . . Please join us here for discussion! Here's the link in case you haven't seen it yet. Dave, W7DGJ

 

Sounds like Mr. deBono was an interesting fellow, I've not read any of his books.
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The 'different colored hats' can be used, I suppose, to describe the 'way' some people think. I've known very happy people (yellow hat?), always up and frankly, fun to be around.
Then there is the Debbie Downers (Black hat?) that are ready to see the downside of damn near everything. I'll not bother with the other 'colors' you listed.
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Not to dis the good Mr. deBono, he is only describing what has been called "collaborative effort" or "Multidiscipline approach" for problem solving for decades. The key to success in any of this is the management of the team - that is to say, how to keep a focus.

Think herding cats.

I've suffered through more than a few of these 'thinking by committee' efforts and can say from personal experience, that keeping a focus is difficult - to impossible - if a defined outcome or solid goal(s) are not posited up front. Hopefully written down and posted in front of the group.
A hard budget limit also helps in keeping expectations to a reasonable level. I'm not saying so-called Blue Sky suggestions are a waste of time, but everything has a imit.

The 'team leader' (or whatever other term might be used) will most definitely have to be a "white hat" thinker - and these kinds of neutral thinkers are often very difficult to find - and why outside consultants are used more often than not.
Why? They have no skin in the game. that is to say - are not players in the office politics that often bedevil these sorts of efforts.
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It is possible to find workable solutions to a vexing problem via a multiple party thought process. It only requires well defined outcomes/goals and someone to keep a focus on the group process - and to encourage everyone to participate.

I'm looking forward to other's take on this subject. I'm willing to bet that depending on the person background (business, Govt, military or academic) you will see some very common themes appear.
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As for the "How Can Ham Radio Survive the Next 10-20 Years?"

As technology advances at an accelerating rate and changes at/to the core level of Human Society also accelerate, I believe looking at 10 to 20 years is unrealistic.

Looking at the recent "The Fourth Turning" book, the authors posit that so-called generational turning is a major factor is all things societal.
Ham radio is, at it's heart, both a hobby and a kind of generational marker in the technological stream we live in.
Given this construct, I would suggest that looking at a shorter-term goal set might be more appropriate.

In more general terms, I would think featuring the ARS as part of or related to STEM classes would yield the best results - if 'more ham radio operators' is your near-term goal.

Looking forward to other replies.

 

Hi Don -- I loved your comments. Yes, deBono isn't necessarily presenting something totally new with his concept of Six Thinking Hats. But he makes it into a great vehicle to roll out in a team where everyone is working together on a shared problem solving mission. The sixth hat, which I didn't talk about, is for the organizer/convener of this group and it is (as you said) important for that person to state the goals clearly and speak only about the clear facts of the matter.

In the example I used, the big question of what happens to Amateur Radio after some time goes by and so many current operators are no longer with us, I could indeed go along with your thought and I sense that it might be better to trim that down to a 3 year timeline. I'll come back with some further thoughts soon, Don, but wanted you to know how much we appreciate your well-stated commentary. Dave

 

As always, another great article!
My Son and I visited the General George Patton Museum in Fort Knox Ky. a few years ago and there were a number of George's saying on the walls. One particular saying stuck in my mind, and I believe it gets to the essence of this article. "When everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking......"

 

While it's possible ham radio may face some challenges in the next 10–20 years that does not mean it will not survive.

I've always believed that "team work" is a great term to be used for sporting activities. If you want to apply team decisions for example in the work place you not only must assure that every member of the team gets credit for positive outcomes they must also receive credit for negative outcomes.

The problem is most organizations have a structure that spells out where responsibility lies within the organization. Do you think the BOD will hold all the team members responsible when things go wrong, or will they go to the CEO who is being paid to make those decisions and ask him what went wrong?

You can delegate authority you cannot delegate responsibility.

The other question I will only touch on is the equal abilities, qualifications, training, etc. of each and every team member.

 

"You can delegate authority you cannot delegate responsibility."

Often heard in my military days as "If no one is in charge, then no one is responsible".
The downside to this is most managers then become risk adverse, which leads to an environment that tends to punish folks that think outside of the box.

 

Thanks Ray, and that's a great quote -- certainly VERY appropriate. Dave, W7DGJ

 

That's for sure. Anyone who has every worked in an organization where the leaders don't want to take a risk knows how frustrating it can be. I would never want to work for a person who is risk adverse as it completely stifles innovation. You can't innovate if you don't think outside the box. I hope the ARRL and every other organization in ham radio is open for people who think outside the box. Sometimes I'm concerned that this isn't the case. Dave, W7DGJ

 

It’s interesting to see the varying schools of though on this subject. Things have definitely changed between now and the time I got my HAM license back in 1995. At that time, most people did not have a cellular phone. Few adults had them, let alone children. The phones themselves were very expensive and the annual contracts were even more expensive. If you wanted to be a “cool kid” in the tech crowd, you would buy or build a heck of a computer and you would get your HAM license. At that time, there were only three kids in my class who even had their own computer, and I was one of them. I was the only kid in my class to have their HAM license (although a couple of underclassmen had also gotten theirs).

HAM radio was in the latter part of its hayday. The repeaters would be buzzing with activity all day long, and much of the repeater activity would be autopatch phone calls. Most of the clubs required membership to use the autopatch on their repeater, but there were some repeaters which had an open autopatch. I recall making my share of calls on the open repeaters.

The internet was still a novelty at the time as the majority of people did not have access to it. Those people who did have access mostly used AOL and were limited to an extremely slow dialup account.

At the time, the top connection speed was 28.8Kbps (56K modems hadn’t even been invented yet). Most computer geeks owned a 386 or 486 with a few megabytes of memory and a hard drive of a few hundred megabytes (if they were lucky). The Pentium processor had just come out a few years before, but it was more commonly purchased by businesses than consumers.

At the time, most people hadn’t ever dreamed of having high speed internet on a small portable handheld device that fits in the palm of their hand! They thought it was technology that only the Jetsons would have.

These were the last years that the masses saw HAM radio as the novelty that it is. A lot of people still bought shortwave radios for DX listening during that time period. Those who wanted to dig deeper would get their feet wet with their first HAM ticket.

While it is noticeably more difficult for the HAM radio hobby to capture the interest of today’s youth, it is not impossible. All one needs to have is an aptitude for electronics and things technical, and the ability to see the practicality of two way radio communications in our modern society. An appreciation for “the way things were” is a plus, but is not a requirement for the newcomer.

In my opinion, the reasons most of today’s youth haven’t even heard of the HAM radio hobby (much less considered it) stem from the following:

Cellphones – Today’s youth expect to have the whole world at the palm of their hands, and they expect to be able to access it with little to no effort. They don’t realize the fact that if the cellular towers and the internet go down (which they will eventually), none of the new technology will work and they’ll be back to the basics. Heck, they don’t know what the basics are.

Internet – They figure “why get a HAM license when I can go online and connect to whoever I want whenever I want”. Again, they’re missing the whole concept of making the connection without wires and without dependency of someone else’s servers. They aren’t comprehending the simplicity and virtual independence offered by two way radio. They’d rather flock to something cool that has emojis and a color touchscreen.

Modern Psychology/Education (Indoctrination) – Teaching our children to “group think” or “blindly do what they’re told”. Basically, I see our modern educational system as domesticating today’s children as automatons of a digital era. Instead of talking to each other directly, they use their cellphones. Instead of shooting hoops, they stand with one foot on the basketball and they stare at the little screen in their hand (yes, I’ve actually observed today’s children doing this very thing). Instead of spending cash, they want to use I-pay (or even eliminate cash altogether for a digital currency). Instead of speaking with a human, “there’s an app for everything” and they download them all.

With practically everything “gone virtual”, they are being taught to own fewer tangible assets. They’re being taught to relinquish ownership of their own personal data to “the cloud”. In the name of the digital age, they are being taught to relinquish, relinquish, relinquish! It makes one wonder to what end??

With HAM radio, our youth can be taught to break their addictions to the above, learn new skills, and embrace the highly useful technology of an earlier time. They can learn to get back to the basics of communication. They could come to the realization that they can get farther in life if they have a good understanding of the basic building blocks upon which modern technology was established. They can begin to see the beauty in simplicity.

They can explore alternative methods of communication and develop an emergency backup plan. They can put their phones down and get out in nature for some Parks On The Air. They can even delve into DMR, P-25, and other digital modes commonly used by public services and law enforcement. They just need to be shown what HAM radio has to offer and what it can really do. Perhaps they can be given a good dose of reality in the process.

 

That is something we may wish to see them accomplish but for that to be successful it must be something they want to seek out on their own because of their interest...not ours.

Your post was well presented.

 

Great article Dave. I came to a career in electronics through amateur radio. Everything I did in amateur radio and my electronics career involved some type of problem solving in a constrained environment.

Troubleshooting an errant NCX-3 in time for November sweepstakes.
Figuring out how to get a Drake C-line as a student with no money.
Putting up the highest performance antennas possible on a small city lot.
As a designer, managing thousands of tradeoffs between weight, size, and performance. Problem solving became the heart of everything I do.

Sometime around 2000 a co-worker introduced me to TRIZ. It turned out to be incredibly useful. If you are a problem solving geek you might want to check it out. Lots of articles online.
Tom

 

Great post, Sebastian. As another poster says below, "very well presented." I've been through the years you talk about early in the message, and agree with you that a lot of this is lost, and probably lost forever. But the lessons we learned as HAM operators really taught us a lot more about life than just how to get a signal up and out of our shack. Through amateur radio (and a couple of great Elmers) I learned how to go from a quiet, inward kid with very few relationships to a person much more outgoing and communicative with others. Literally, in the space of a year, as my parents would say "he came out of his shell." Also, while kids aren't as appreciative of electronics knowledge today as in those golden years, I learned a good deal of electronics. I'm still no guru when it comes to a soldering iron and a bag of parts, but at least I know why things work the way they do. I think that today there are a lot of parents who have children that could use these things, and they might recognize a boy or girl who needs a pastime that teaches them some of these things, more broadly, about life.

The problem is that in talking about these wonderful experiences of ours, we sometimes sound like the "old guys" I remember from my childhood, who were always putting down the kids of the day and talking about how much better things used to be. I turned my son off of ham radio that way, unfortunately. So, if I couldn't get my own flesh and blood to be excited about radio, I am really perplexed about the ways to move forward here. I do know that when I go off on a diatribe about the old days of ham radio, I lose listeners (the younger ones). Therefore, we need to rethink the whole process of presenting radio to the junior masses -- it can't be in talking about the old days. We have to be future-oriented. We're more likely to get their attention if we talk about the value of two-way radio in a zombie apocalypse, actually. (Added later: This isn't such a bad idea. We could use a great TV show, movie or series of Young Adult books in which there's some kind of emergency scenario, aliens, war, zombies, and the kids save the day with their radios).

Another contact here on the T&E forum told me in a personal email that he thinks we talk about young people too much when we discuss the future of the amateur radio services. "There are a lot of guys coming up for retirement who should consider this as well," he said. And he's right. While that's not a 10-20 year solution, that's a good 3 year solution so to speak.

Thanks for the conversation folks! Fun! Dave, W7DGJ

 

I try not to talk about the old days in infinitum either. Perhaps the best parts of my story are the ones I left out. These include the fact that radio has become my career. My first job was as a technician/manager for a two way radio provider. I am currently a field engineer for a large radio network and I wouldn't trade it for the world. Amateur radio can get you started in the way of 2-way communication, law enforcement, aerospace, commercial broadcasting, and several other industries. HAM radio is a good foot in the door.

 

The photo of Edward de Bono needs a pipe

I opened the article and assumed that the tittle, 'problem-solving-for-the-amateur-radio-operator', had something useful to offer in the way of helping the new Ham develop trouble shooting skills. The antenna resolution example was bad. Trouble shooting by committee is one of the most illogical and unreliable methods to diagnose a problem. The result can hardly be called "elegant".

I was at once taken back to the 90's with books by Steven Covey, Mission Vision, Value training and the like. If you have ever talked to a new age employer, you know what I mean. Everyone of them has read a Steven Covey book, a book on Riding the Bus, or taken Mission, Vision, Value Training. But how many of those people actually bought into the process, and of those that did, how many actually implemented a solution and measured the results? Darn near zero. Sold a lot of books though - best sellers in fact!

Many a gathering of hams on the radio and at Hamfests are rife with this "Lateral thinking" using all of those hats. Implementation is another thing all together.

 

Ron, sorry you were disappointed. I write about topics that have had an influence on me, personally and in the lives of those I know or who I have worked with. When someone refers to another as a "mentor," you can just about be sure that that person's ideas are going to have some personal meaning to them. That's why being critical for fun is riskier when you are talking about something deeply imbedded in the other.

Edward's work was not only influential to me, but I witnessed the use of his tools in solving countless problems for my client companies. Yes - more of a corporate thing, and as you pointed out, some companies really got behind those business books in the late 1980s/1990's. There was nothing worse at the time than being literally forced, along with your team mates, to go through some kind of training like the "One Minute Manager" or any from that time period (do you remember "Who Moved My Cheese?" ). Ugh.

I agree, not many people bought into the process when they were forced to attend. deBono's material, on the other hand, was often used for self-selecting teams where a group needed to think through a problem and come up with a solution, and they needed some structure. It's not "illogical or unreliable" when used in a group setting where people are buying into the process. The colored hats approach DOES work to illuminate the problem really well, and point out perhaps some directions that wouldn't normally come up.

The example of the slowly rising SWR wasn't a deBono example, just supposed to point out how great it feels to solve a problem. The "elegant" comment refers to the fact that it was a cheap, easy, and often overlooked "fix." I've fixed this problem with the article by moving that example to the top of the column where it fits better . . . and thanks Ron for your comments that definitely helped to improve our issue on this one, Dave W7DGJ