Dave Heil wrote:
Steve Bonine wrote:
wrote:
I became a ham at age 13, mostly through what I learned from ARRL
books. The big attraction was that Radio in general and Amateur Radio
in particular looked like a lot of fun to me. And for more than 40
years, it has been.
Me too. But I do think that we have increased competition these days
from other outlets for prospective hams, and other things that "look
like a lot of fun". Computers and such gadgets are a part of daily
life for young folks these days; it's only natural that they gravitate
in that direction. I suspect that the vast majority of them have not
been exposed to ham radio at all.
You have to admit that there were always things which looked like a lot
of fun. In our day it was guitars, skateboards, stereo equipment,
photography, sports and GIRLS. Not many of us were exposed to amateur
radio in terms of percentages of young people.
The difference is the level of exposure as a user. Today, every young
person is exposed to personal computers as a user, in the same way that
they are exposed to cars as a user. Most of them won't go past the
level of a user, but a few will turn into gearheads or into computer geeks.
I had an old Zenith tabletop radio with shortwave which covered 5.5 to
18 MHz. I used it initially to listen to broadcast radio. Then I
discovered the shortwave broadcasters and finally the 40 and 20m hams
using AM. Luckily for me, I heard a ham who was in our town and he lit
the fire for me.
That's my point. I, too, had access to a shortwave receiver and
followed much the same path that you did. That's much less likely to
happen today. Back then, people were exposed to radio as users. Today,
they're exposed to it via cell phones but they don't perceive it as
radio. Entering ham radio via the SWL route is very rare these days.
There were lots of young hams and young SWLs who were interested in
becoming hams. They read Pop'tronics and EI. Most of the Novices I
worked were in my age group.
Now that you mention it, I do remember working a lot of novices who were
in my age group. There weren't that many local hams who were as young
as me, but there were a lot on the air.
K8CFT administered Novice exams to a
number of junior high and high school aged boys. At one time, the
little town of Oak Hill, West Virginia (population 7,000) boasted seven
young Novices along with six or seven higher class radio amateurs. Of
those seven hams, five are still licensed and active. One dropped out
of amateur radio and one (who was active) died last year. The key was
that *we were interested*. No one can make someone spend his leisure
hours doing something in which he has no interest.
Yes, but you can only be interested in something if you know it exists.
If the option of finding out about ham radio via the SWL route has
disappeared, how do young people find out that they have the option of
spending leisure hours in ham radio?
I think that the best option to attract young folks into the hobby is to
expose them at school. Doing that requires teachers who are at least
amenable to the idea. I suppose that getting publicity into the
channels that they use could work, but I'm not sure how to do that. I'm
not even sure what channels to shoot for.
Another option is to attract older recruits. This has its own set of
issues since someone who is busy raising a family and building a career
may not have vast amounts of spare time to spend in a hobby.
But for me the bottom line is that it's important to attract people into
the hobby to replace the folks who are leaving. As the ham population
ages and declines, it becomes more and more difficult to find a critical
mass of local hams to support things like the local club, FD operations,
Skywarn, and anything that's not done on the air. This problem is
especially evident in rural areas that don't have a large population to
draw from.
73, Steve KB9X