RadioBanter - View Single Post

May 31st 05, 06:30 PM

wrote:
wrote:
wrote:

. . .
On the other hand, I believe that we should have a good
mix of ages.

Sure - but how much is enough? If, say, 10% of the US amateur
population were under the age of 21, would that be enough?

What "dire fate" would befall ham radio if there wasn't a single
licensee under 21? What do they actaully bring to hobby which
is so
important?? Sorry, makes no sense, I just don't get it.

Whole bunch of things:

1) Youth is the future

??. . ya got me. What does THAT mean??

2) One of the Basis and Purposes of the ARS

No counter, that nonsense is a long-since worn out old bureaucratic
relic/crutch which needs a serious update. Ham radio is a recreational
pastime with some value in it's ability to provide emergency comms and
not much if anything else.

is education - which
includes things like educating youth. Even if a young ham does
not become an engineer or technical type, the technical background
of ham radio is a good thing to have.

3) The ARS has the image of an "old white guy's hobby" in some
circles.

In a *lot* of circles and they're basically right. This phenomenon is a
result of evolutionary forces at work within the hobby. There are two
choices he Go with the obvious flow and accept where Mother Nature
is leading us and take advantage of it -OR- fight Mother which is
always a losing battle and try to keep applying the mores, values and
expectations of the yesteryears when we came into the hobby 50, 30 even
20 years ago. So yeah, ham radio has been moving toward being an old
white fart's RF spectrum playground for years. Once more I ask *so
what?*

While that's not an accurate picture, losing younger
hams isn't going to help things

We can't lose what we don't have.

4) Young folks have a lot to offer the ARS.

Beats me, name a few of those. Besides kids being better tower monkeys
than us geezers are.

If it's a numbers game why not shift gears and recruit retirees instead of chasing kids?

That's been going on for a couple decades now.

Don't agree. Point out one example of a formal effort to consciously
recruit older folk. Which is like all the widely publicized (and
generally failed) programs which have been targeting kids over the
years.

Look at the folks
we did FD with a few years ago - most of the older folks in that
crowd were licensed after age 55.

Exactly, you couldn't have made my point any better, thankew. If we're
playing a numbers game and/or if we're trying to find the most
promising market sector for recruiting puposes it's obvious to me that
the older crowd, particularly the retirees would be much more fertile
territory than the kids. Take a hypothetical example: The ARRL sets
aside $100k for a one-year recruiting campaign and brings in a
marketing firm to handle it. The firm gets up to speed on the
demographics of the hobby and reserches where new members are coming
from *today* and where they're not coming from. My bet is that they'd
spend the majority of the dollars on getting ads and articles into the
AARP magazine vs. spending any of it on demonstrably futile SOP ARRL
kiddie chasing expeditions.

The thing to do is what Dee says - recruit anyone with an interest.

Of course but that has nothing to do with reaching out which is where
I'm coming from. .

The retirees are far more independent than kids,

Very true.

they're more mature,

HAH! Look at the FCC enforcement letters - you don't see many
young people being cited for serious operating violations.

There was a guy in Florida named Flippo or some such, and now
Gerritsen in LA. They have no counterparts in the younger
crowd.

Or you can look at the behavior of one "retired from
regular hours" frequent poster here....Maturity?

Oh come on James, if there's a *thousand* of those twistoids and
miscreants in the hobby they'd represent a lousy 0.15% of the total
licensed population. The rest of society should be this free of
a-holes.

on average they don't care about nonsense like
instant gratification and peer pressure
and they have the time the kids
don't have. And in most cases they also have the money the kids don't have.

Those I'll agree with.

73 de Jim, N2EY