Dick Grady AC7EL wrote:
Last December, some hams in my town put on a "Ham Cram" one-day study and
license test for Technician Class. One week ahead of time, the students
received a print-out of the question pool. On Ham Cram day, from 7:30 AM to
1:00 PM they were drilled on the questions, with the correct answer being
stressed. After a lunch break, at 2:00 PM my VE License exam team arrived to
test them. 13 of 14 passed. BUT, I have had contact with several of these
students since the Ham Cram, and they had almost no practical knowledge of
amateur radio. They required A LOT of Elmering. IMHO, lessons spread out one
night a week for a couple of months, with practical demonstrations and
discussions of ham culture would have made much better hams.

I think that the optimum recipe for baking a new ham is first a class
that teaches basic concepts based on the pool questions, then the exam,
followed by a combination of classes and one-on-one Elmering to get the
new hams on the air and integrated into the ham-radio community.

If you present a prospective ham with the prospect of a class that
continues for months they're likely to be intimidated to the point of
deciding that they can't make that level of time commitment. The trick
is finding a scheduling scheme that gives you enough time to do more
than just go over the pool questions but doesn't scare away all the
prospective students.

A one-day cram might be a good starting point *if* there is plenty of
followup support and the new/prospective hams are encouraged to do more
than attend the one-day class, pass their written test, and then never
get involved with the hobby. Personally, I don't care for cram
sessions, but some people do, and they have the advantage of providing
an opportunity to get people "hooked" and thereby get them into
appropriate followup activities. They also have the potential for being
such a negative experience that they turn off prospective hams.
Everything is a trade off.

The key to getting new people involved in the hobby is to pique their
interest enough that they follow through. Back in the "good 'ole days"
the allure of radio technology was enough to attract folks, many of them
teenagers, into the hobby. In today's world, radio is pretty "low tech"
and this natural attraction is diluted by newer bells and whistles. We
need to do the same kinds of public relations and marketing that is done
by other activities that are competing for peoples' spare time. We need
people to read or see something that makes them think, "Gee, that could
be a rewarding activity." You can offer all the entry-level classes you
want, but if no one is interested enough in the potential of ham radio
to attend the class, nothing is gained.

That's not to say that I have any magic answers on how to do this. I do
see a trend of more "middle aged" recruits coming on board these days --
people who have had the idea in the back of their heads for years of
getting into ham radio, and finally have time to act on it. My
experience is that many of these folks see an article about ham radio
being used for some aspect of public service, and that's what re-kindles
the latent idea, but I have no real scientific basis for that belief. I
think it would be a good use of ARRL funds to do some market research in
this area, figure out what it is that's motivating people to enter the
hobby, then use that knowledge to improve our PR.

As an aside, for those who might be interested in the class that was the
impetus to start this thread, I've got ten students and I think that
things are going well. Most of the students are interacting in the
class and seem to be enthusiastic about what they're learning. (Well,
perhaps "enthusiastic" is a bit of an overstatement since much of what
we discuss is dry regulations, but at least I haven't heard any snores
yet.) Of course it is much too early to tell how successful we will be
since I will judge that based on how many of these folks I hear on the
air and see at local ham-related activities six months from now.

73, Steve KB9X