RadioBanter - Morseing it up?

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On 20/01/2016 01:15, Fred Roberts wrote:

Have taken part in a number of highly successful high profile special
event stations the one thing that excited visitors both old and new was
CW. Nothing else came close, we had hordes of kids lining up to have
their name transmitted in morse and to play with oscillators. When
running pileups with qso's being displayed in real time on a computer
display adults were amazed at:

1. The distances involved
2. The speed of contacts
3. The bouncing around between countries/continents

Digimodes bore the public and someone talking on sideband/FM/DV/repeater
is just a **** talking sh!te into a microphone.

CW is the mode par excellence for attracting new comers.

It is Morse QSOs that the traditional friendliness still survives.

It is in morse code, home construction and tinkering that friendliness
and real amateur radio survives.

What an excellent description.

WHS in spades.

--
Spike

"They thought that because they had power, they had wisdom"

- with apologies to Stephen Vincent Benet

In message , AndyW
writes

When I was a lad the prospect of talking transatlantic was the stuff of
sci fi.

Never mind 'transatlantic'. When I was a lad, even the prospect of
talking to someone in the next village was the stuff of sci-fi.

We didn't get electricity in the village until I was nearly 5 years old,
and 'simple' electricity was only pure magic.

--
Ian

"Ian Jackson" wrote in message
...

We didn't get electricity in the village until I was nearly 5 years old,
and 'simple' electricity was only pure magic.

As late as the mid 1960s on a family holiday I was staying in what was
little more than a croft, the home of a relative's mother-in-law. Water
was got from a spring on the hillside and the old lady would not have
electricity installed lest it leaked out of the sockets during the night and
killed them all.

Lighting by oil lamps, washing by a jug and bowl in the bedroom, hams curing
over the front of the fire.

"Spike" wrote in message
...
On 20/01/2016 01:15, Fred Roberts wrote:
Have taken part in a number of highly successful high profile special
event stations the one thing that excited visitors both old and new was
CW. Nothing else came close, we had hordes of kids lining up to have
their name transmitted in morse and to play with oscillators. When
running pileups with qso's being displayed in real time on a computer
display adults were amazed at:
1. The distances involved
2. The speed of contacts
3. The bouncing around between countries/continents
Digimodes bore the public and someone talking on sideband/FM/DV/repeater
is just a **** talking sh!te into a microphone.
CW is the mode par excellence for attracting new comers.
It is Morse QSOs that the traditional friendliness still survives.
It is in morse code, home construction and tinkering that friendliness
and real amateur radio survives.
What an excellent description.
WHS in spades.

+1.

Also taking Rambo's advert into consideration, then Enigma, Morse and
CW spy sets could be the way forward if it s REALLY thought necessary to
attract the youngsters.

En el artículo , Stephen Thomas
Cole escribió:

What does Gareth usually say about hams who try and attract youngsters to
the hobby?

He offers sex training to their teenage daughters.

From: "gareth"
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2015 16:12:31 -0000
Message-ID:

"If you had a teenage daughter, which would you prefer her to receive,
sex education or sex training?"

What a sordid sleazeball.

--
(\_/)
(='.'=) Bunny says: Windows 10? Nein danke!
(")_(")

Mike Tomlinson wrote:

En el artículo , Stephen Thomas
Cole escribió:

What does Gareth usually say about hams who try and attract youngsters to
the hobby?

He offers sex training to their teenage daughters.

I am no apologist for Gareth's real life misbehaviour, but the above is,
as you are probably aware, a lie.

From: "gareth"
Date: Sat, 5 Dec 2015 16:12:31 -0000
Message-ID:

"If you had a teenage daughter, which would you prefer her to receive,
sex education or sex training?"

What a sordid sleazeball.

It was a rather prurient but effective illustration of the difference
between training and education. Not vey tasteful, but not what you
claimed.

--

Roger Hayter

On 20/01/2016 04:06, Michael Black wrote:

[snip]

It's a skill and kids (as opposed to adults) like doing things that
most can't.

It has an aura of mystique about it and that attracts people.

Like I said in a recent thread, when I got my ham
license at age 12 in 1972, the test wasn't a hurdle, it was an
adventure. I was soaking up as much theory as I could read anyway.

Pretty much the same story here, I was reading everything I could get my
hands on (back then there were a lot more magazines around), talking to
the locals at clubs, swl'ing and studting a copy of the RAE manual.

There was a time when many or most hams came into the hobby at a
relatively young age.

I came in at the age of 22 but I don't remember a time when I wasn't
fascinated by radio, I remember as a small child (pre-school) asking my
mother how radios worked.

IN more recent times, that's changed, probably
a ersult of the "dumbing down". They don't have to learn so much (at
a time when they might not be interested in learning) but their lure
into the hobby is quite different from in the old days, or when we
were kids.

The internet has changed everything.

As that happens, it changes the hobby. The retiring ARRL president
was only licensed in 1985 or so, 30 years ago but I gather she wasn't
a child. That has to skew things, the adults seeing the hobby
differently.

The trick about attacting newcomers is to spark an interest in them when
they are young and I don't mean dumb the crap out of it just to get kids
on the air! This policy has been a disaster in the UK. Spark an interest
via CW and home construction and the likelihood is a high percentage
will take up the service when adults.

If you think code is an impediment, you will perceive it as a
negative part of the hobby.

It's a very, very good idiot filter.

Same with all that technical stuff.

There's no way around that though, amateur radio is a technical pursuit.

One of those blogs that get jammed into the newsgroup, the other day
someone said something about amateur radio not being 'spiffy"
enough. But time was those pictures of people's shacks with all that
gear was good enough. Has that faded, or are the adults deciding it
can't be a lure for the young, so they feel they have to compete with
all the current stuff?

I believe the trick is to make it interesting and cool. Morse interests
kids and being able to make world wide contacts with a few watts of
homebrewed RF is cool.

I think the hobby is less attractive today, based on how it's
presented (and it gets a lot less presentation to the public than in
the past). But some of that is because people have tried to erase the
past, because they feel it doesnt' compete with the new.

It is presented in entirely the wrong way. Unwashed, uneducated ****s
who have been gifted access to amateur radio via the great dumb down
talking utter crap into a microphone at special event stations presents
amateur radio in the worst possible light. It is no coincidence that
since the dumb down amateur radio has all but died in the UK, the RSGB
is on its knees and rallies are deserted.

Building a crystal radio today doesn't offer much in the way of a
practical radio. But it's the essence of putting those parts
together and having it work that was appealing.

Absolutely right!

When I started
building electronic projects, the first few never worked, I had no
idea what went wrong (in retrospect, it might have been my lousy
soldering, or the parts that they substituted at the store, I didn't
know enough to fix things back then). But then I kept at it, and when
I took parts out of something and twisted the leads together and that
oscillator oscillated, that was so neat. I'd learned enough to be
able to evaluate the parts and make substitutes. That accomplishment
is probably a key part of the appeal of the hobby to the young, who
are in a very different place than adults.

I started building when I was a child. And I will never forget the
thrill when licensed of hearing my first DX on a home built rx or making
my first qrp qso's with home brewed RF. We shouldn't forget that home
brew and CW go together like hand in glove

--
Extend ****s law - make 'em wear a cheat sheet 24/7

"Fred Roberts" wrote in message
...
Unwashed, uneducated ****s who have been gifted access to amateur radio via
the great dumb down talking utter crap into a microphone at special event
stations presents amateur radio in the worst possible light.

STC?

I started building when I was a child. And I will never forget the thrill
when licensed of hearing my first DX on a home built rx or making my first
qrp qso's with home brewed RF. We shouldn't forget that home brew and CW
go together like hand in glove

When I cobbled together my blooper using one half on a 12AT7 I was
thrilled to receive Voice of America. It was only later that I learned that
they had a big TX in Europe!

"Edmund H. Ramm" wrote in message
...
In Fred Roberts writes:

[...]
It's a very, very good idiot filter.
[...]

As a Morse instructor I can't confirm that more intelligent people
learn CW faster or easier. But CW decidedly is not for the Instant
Gratification Crowd. Determination and endurance are valuable assets
when learning Morse.

73, Eddi ._._.

very true I wasn't intelligent but I was determined to get on HF .......

"Edmund H. Ramm" wrote in message
...
In Fred Roberts writes:
[...]
It's a very, very good idiot filter.
[...]

As a Morse instructor I can't confirm that more intelligent people
learn CW faster or easier. But CW decidedly is not for the Instant
Gratification Crowd. Determination and endurance are valuable assets
when learning Morse.

73, Eddi ._._.

What's wrong with instant gratification?
--
;-)
..
73 de Frank Turner-Smith G3VKI - mine's a pint.
..
http://turner-smith.uk