Cmd Buzz Corey wrote:
wrote:
One possible explanation is that the real problem
is publicity and image, not license requirements.
If people don't know what ham radio is, the license
requirements have no effect on them.
Ham radio just isn't very appealing to the current generation. There are
too many other things to compete, computers, the Internet, vidoe games.
Kids had rather be skilled at playing the latest video game than have
technical skills in some outdated (to them) mode of communication. They
had much rather build a computer than a radio. Who needs a ham radio
station to talk to someone in another state or even in another country,
just whip out the cell phone. Almost every teenager now has one.
That's true of most of the population - but most of that has been true
for decades now.
I was high school class of 1972. In a school of over 2400 boys, with a
curriculum that emphasized math and science, we had no more than a
half-dozen hams.
Back then ham radio had "competition" (in no particular order) from
sports, school activities, music, counterculture events, antiwar
protests, CB, TV, radio, music, cars and girls. Also family chores,
schoolwork and after-school jobs.
We didn't have cell phones or the internet but we had the telephone and
we could get around pretty well, with or without cars.
In those days the #1 technical hobby for teenage boys was working on
cars. For less than the price of most ham rigs, you could buy a $100
used car and fix it up well enough to get around. Some lucky rich kids
got 10-year-old hand-me-down cars from the parental units, which they
then worked on to keep on the road. Cars were simpler then, and a
mechanically-minded kid knew all about how they worked long before
driving age.
So "competition" for kids' time is nothing new.
The most-often-asked questions about ham radio, then and now, a
"Who do you talk to?"
"What do you talk about?" and
"Why go to all that trouble to talk to strangers?"
Most people back then "didn't get it". A few did. Same as today.
IMHO the prime time to attract kids to ham radio is middle school or
earlier.
73 de Jim, N2EY