"Dee Flint" wrote on Tue, 10 Apr 2007
22:31:17 EDT
"AF6AY" wrote in message


BTW, as to Dee Flint's other comment in this thread, the "pros"
in electronics HAVE been informed of the code test elimination
since December, 2006. EDN and Electronic Design, both industry
trades of wide distribution, and SPECTRUM, the membership
magazine of the IEEE had news of that prior to 23 Feb 07. There

What percentage of the general populace read EDN, Electronic Design, and
Spectrum? We can't rely on just one group of people (pros in electronics)
to provide stability or even growth.

The worldwide membership of the IEEE exceeds the number of licensed
active US radio amateurs. The electronics industry employs
millions in the USA alone. It is BIG.

Just because a person is an
electronics pro doesn't necessarily mean that amateur radio will tickle
their fancy.

That's true and observable in any corporate electronics engineering
environment. But, don't forget that the majority of those IN the
electronics engineering part of the industry got INTO it for the
fascination of the technology. It doesn't take a great deal of
persuasion to get them interested in the hobby aspects of radio
beyond scanners, beyond SWL, beyond WiFi, beyond WLANs. Indeed,
some of them get into robotics, a fun hobby for many...or they get
into audio. My MD General Practitioner is fascinated by speakers
and various ways to couple them for the highest-fi of sound, but
not INTO circuitry itself...despite being able to USE a number
of very high-tech electronic devices in his medical practice.

Those in wholesale and retail merchandising of electronics pay
attention to many phases of the electronics market, trying to
anticipate demand. They will also delete items that do not sell
well or where the local interest groups are too small for them
to make a profit in their business. My wife and I were out today
looking for a particular item of consumer electronics. One place,
a relatively new Best Buy store (built four years ago), was huge.
A mile and a half away is a Fry's Electronics, even bigger. In
observing the entire electronics retail industry for the last half
century, I've never seen any amateur radio outlet that approaches
their size.

What percentage of the newspapers carried those fillers? Not many.

Perhaps. I can only state that the Los Angeles TIMES has a
circulation of 1.4 million each day. Since more than one
person will read one issue, the number of readers here may
exceed 3 million.

Of
those, what percentage of people actually read the fillers tucked in here
and there in the newspaper?

I have no idea, not being in the journalism field. You might
try asking your own newspaper about that.

We need to get the word out among the general populace not just specialty
groups.

I will suggest you observe the Public Relations techniques of
the entertainment industry. They manage to get enormous PR
about entertainers, TV series, motion pictures, etc. Or any
advertising agency willing to talk about it (not that easy).
They KNOW about such things.

The first thing amateur radio MUST do is to LOSE the old, trite
cliche's of a half century ago used to "promote" amateur radio.
Almost all of that just doesn't work in this first decade of the
new millennium. We have one in three Americans with a cell phone.
CB users outnumber licensed radio amateurs by anywhere from 4:1
to 7:1, certainly so and larger on the nation's highways. We
get worldwide video feed from anywhere on the globe for TV news,
the only thing stopping some on late-breaking news is the crowding
of communications satellite transponders. We all were able to see
"videophone" pictures from inside Iraq during the first Gulf War
(a decade and a half ago). We can have VoIP anywhere that the
Internet is, which is sizeable on every continent. We have
wireless auto "keyless entry" locks by the millions in use every
day. We have Wireless LANs available in homes, not just
businesses. We have wireless door bells and the cell phone
"Bluetooth" short-range couplers to a teeny cell phone typified
by the strange growth some ardent users have in one ear. :-)

The general public - to me - doesn't seem to know exactly what
"shortwave" is, even less informed on what "HF" is. They know
about CB because such has been featured as an integral part of
one popular TV series ("Dukes of Hazard"), used in several major
motion pictures ("Convoy" and "Smokey and the Bandit" among the
bigger grossers). The best that can be said for showing amateur
radio is the film "Frequency," a fantasy tale of some kind of
time travel. Note, "Contact" starring Jodie Foster, was much
more science-fiction about first meeting with aliens even
though it had brief showing of amateur radio as part of the
story.

The general public can recognize cell site antennas and towers,
can understand that police and fire and other public safety
agencies USE radio as part of their work. They KNOW they can
choose a satellite relay service for their home TV instead of
going to cable; the little dishes are unmistakable. They
just don't have an appreciation for a "QRP ham rig that can
talk anywhere in the world," especially when that ham rig
requires just the right kind of ionospheric conditions to be
able to do that. In general, the public seems unaware of
shortwave broadcasts since they have plenty of standard AM
and FM broadcasting available in every US urban center.

The general public is much more aware of the skylines of many
urban neighborhoods interrupted by towers with beam antennas,
ungainly wire antennas strung as best a residence plot allows.
In general they think them ugly and unsuitable for a residential
neighborhood. In general they aren't going to be sold on some
tall tale of "those are 'necessary' for homeland defense!"
Besides the occasional RFI problem, the general public has a
negative opinion of amateur radio in their neighborhood...it
is their HOME territory, not a radio center.

Trying to talk up amateur radio to the general public
requires being AWARE of what the general public knows, NOT
what amateurs or membership organizations want. It isn't
publicity to promote ham radio to the general public if all
that is done is amateurs high-fiving one another on a "job
well done." It isn't "well done" to the public if they
reamin insular. Despite being an ARRL member, I cannot
(in truth) say that the ARRL has gotten out to the public.
If anything, NASA has done that much more on requesting
astronauts to get Technician class licenses to talk to
various public school groups from space. That's a NASA
PR ploy to keep the public aware of NASA activities...
and future NASA budgeting to keep the space biz going.

Walter Cronkhite as a narrator of an amateur radio video
about amateur radio is fine. But, it can't just be
shown to amateur radio clubs. It has to get OUT to the
public. At least sell the idea of showing the video as
a public service, something the stations are required to
do. So what if the showing is in the wee small hours of
the morning? SOME showing is better than NONE.

73, Len AF6AY