"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...
Many people lament that there is not enough interest in Ham radio by
young people.

There are often many reasons given for this deficiency, and somewhat
less "fixes".

One of the reasons that is given very often is that Amateur radio is in
some sort of competition with the Internet. Let us look at this theory.

What is the competition between the two? In order to use the internet,
one must of course have a computer. It must be connected to the
internet, through one of several methods. Once the person has learned to
turn on the computer, open a few programs or so, they have the
necessary skills to work the internet.

Amateur radio on the other hand, requires that a radio be used, which
requires some skill in operating. An antenna system needs to be
connected to this radio. Whereas it is possible to have everything set
up for the Ham, most young people do not have the resources to have
someone set up their system. Coupled with the possibility of putting an
antenna in operation that only costs a few dollars, or even less if the
youngster has good scrounging skills, the likelihood is that they would
design and put up their own antenna, another skill needed.

So there is a large difference in the skills needed for the two hobbies.

Cell phones as competition? While there is a temptation to snipe "Get
Real!", I'll address those too.

What would make a person decide to take up Cell phone use as a hobby?
Cell phones allow you to talk to people that you know (for the most
part) and operate in the same manner as a regular telephone, save that
you take the cell with you, and you are generally tied in the same
building with a standard telephone. It's hard to imagine someone doing
that as a hobby, although there are a lot of people who spend a lot of
time using them.

So what makes a youngster decide to become a Ham?

We can try using the input of those who became Hams at a young age.
Most of what I have heard is that the person was very interested in the
technical aspects involved with getting on the air. Making antennas,
building rigs, and getting them on the air was a big part of the
attraction.

In the end, I believe that it is young people that have a technical
interest that will likely become Hams.

And that, I believe, is the crux of the issue.

America is not a place that encourages those who might be thinking of a
technical career. We have a tendency to encourage a more "pop culture"
outlook, which as often as not discounts actual learning for "street
cred", and actually turns the smart person into an object of ridicule.
There are levels, and there are levels. If a person is intelligent, and
wants a good livelihood, you will find careers that are acceptable. You
can be a movie star, or perhaps a lawyer. A whole spectrum follows, but
engineering and the technical fields are not very high on that list.

How often is the Techie portrayed as a sort of Bill Nye, the science
guy type (at best). How about the smart woman who takes off her glasses
and suddenly becomes the hot babe? Professor Frink on "The Simpsons"?
Pop culture is not kind to the technical types.

My experiences with programs like "bring your sons and daughters to
work day" shows that almost none of the kids is even thinking of a
technical field. A lot want to be lawyers.

Once in the past, we were scared into thinking that maybe science and
technology was maybe not such a bad thing. That happened when the
commies launched Sputnik. Suddenly it seemed important that at least
some of our kids decided to work in the sciences. Hopefully we will
decide that again without having to be shocked into it.

I am pretty firmly convinced that until we stop catering to the least
common denominator, until we stop marginalizing the technically and
scientifically inclined, we will not find many youngsters who want to
come into our hobby.

- Mike KB3EIA -


Hello, Mike

You've hit the nail on the head. Look at one reply to Dee's comment.

I went to a pipe organ concert last evening and ran into a guy who has been
in broadcasting. I'm glad I got out of broadcasting. He was glad he was
approaching retirement. He told me that he hated news. Oh, if you are an
anchor or weatherman, you can make $150,000 a year, no sweat. But for the
folks that have to take the equipment and run the recorders or gather the
news for that personality, wages are terrible.

I was in broadcasting at one time. I served as an engineer at a couple of
stations and chief engineer of one station. The pay was pretty good.

Then the FCC changed things. No more 1st class radiotelephone license
required. This allowed anyone to get in with no prior anything.

Stations (due to competition from satellite and cable tv) started
networking. One local station let go most of the staff and they get their
feed from another station in Syracuse (that also feeds other stations owned
by the same entity). A skeleton crew for the news, network feeds during the
day, and the feed from Syracuse otherwise. One person serves as chief
engineer for 5 stations and they run him ragged. And he makes less than
those on-air personalities that might work 4 hours per day (plus a few more
researching, but certainly less than 8 hours per day). BTW, the interns
work for *nothing*. It is part of their college "education". Since they
receive college credit for the work, there is no labor law violation. I've
heard that the working jobs are paying perhaps 7 to 12 bucks per hour. Why
would someone want to get into that? Heck, don't think, cut grass, and
you'll make perhaps 8 or 10.

I recently posted a link. Most interesting. Direct TV (which I subscribe
to) is launching a number of satellites to feed high-definition to the U.S.
Guess who launched the satellite for them? Russia!

China has most of our manufacturing.

I refuse to work as a toolmaker for $10.00 per hour. I'd take a job as a
janitor before virtually giving away labor that should be around $30.00 per
hour.

Many folks that got hit with the latest cuts where I put in most of my
career are back working as temps - at about 60% wages and no benefits.

Fortunately, they didn't pull the plug fast enough on me. Although my
pension is small, I do get health coverage (at least most of it) from my
former employer.

I am not considering just not working. I won't have the income that I'd
like, but enough to manage on. Social Insecurity is only 4 1/2 years away.

I had enough technical knowledge stolen from me over the years at that
company. The last time, I was speaking with a supervisor about how terrible
the code was in their programmable ladder controllers. I told him that scan
rates could be cut by a factor of 7 and cycle times improved. I also
mentioned that I had automated ladder generation with optimization back
around 1982.

He stated that if I could do it, he'd take me in to see the manager. I told
him that I had the code already but was not going to give it to the
department because we were going to loose our jobs anyway.

So, China does the work manually. They didn't want the machines.

Fasten your seatbelts. We're going down fast and it is going to be a bumpy
ride.



73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA