robert casey wrote in
link.net:



Thing one - there never will be a huge number of hams.

Thing two - I've seen firsthand the damage that the grouchy olde
tymers can do. They chase people away. Old timers with an attitude
are now the greatest danger to Ham radio.

Putting together a station is fun.

Talking around the world without a structure is fun.

Most people don't realize how much infrastructure it takes to have
flame wars on newsgroups via the Internet. :-)

How true. And that infrastructure is indeed fragile. I've said it
before, but anyone thinking that they are beinh hi-tech because they are
using the internet is fooling themself.


They need to
understand that before they can appreciate that hams can talk to other
hams worldwide without any infrastructure other than their own radios
and antennas.

There you state the magic of radio. And we haven't been doing all
that good a job of explaining that.


Learning about all that Radio encompasses is fun.

Talking with friends old and new about radio is fun

Fun, fun, fun, fun for everyone!


Listening to someone bemoan CB'ers, nickle extras, and how
their
prowess in CW makes them superior, how Hams really had it hard in the
old days, any idiot can become a ham nowadays, next thing yaknow,
they will be giving licenses away on boxes of cereal type hams, and
on and on is not fun.


"No kids, no lids, and no space cadets!"....

The ARRL should place a few ads in CB magazines to announce the no
code HF licenses. Not that we would want "freebander" style activity
to leak into the ham bands, but some "freebanders" may want to
"repent" and get into legal radio (sure, it sounds hokey, but what the
hell...). But it needs to be clear that they must quit the "freeband"
once they become hams. And maybe some elmers can help them convert
that "lynaear" into a clean and proper linear for 10m....


I don't disagree.

- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -