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Before and After Cessation of Code Testing
"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 |
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Before and After Cessation of Code Testing
AF6AY wrote:
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. Yup, NASA has gotten a lot more mileage out of the project than the ARS has. 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. Another suggestion. most Cable systems have public service channels. Amateur radio advocates should be able to tap into that. There is one caveat, and I go into this with a bit of sensitivity here. In my non-Ham life, I often put together productions that serve as advertisements. The old adage of putting your best foot forward is mandatory if you are going to get a message across. We often do not do that. You don't need - or even want - the smartest Ham on the block. What you need is an adept communicator. This erudite communicator needs to be "prettied up" for the prospective audience. Wearing a "Hooters" T-shirt ain't gonna cut it. I would probably wear a suit and tie (note not a white shirt and skinny black tie). Maybe lose the jacket after a few minutes. In similar form, we're trying to attract teenagers, we probably don't want a kid with a tattoo on his forehead and a safety pin in his lip. Why don't we want that local uberHam? In many (most?) cases they are not very good communicators.(note the difference between communicating and communicator) They are too close to the subject. If we're trying to demonstrate HF comms for the unfamiliar, they don't need a lecture on the third intercept point of whatever transceiver. Sometimes they want to show how smart they are more than try to attract people.. Wanna scare a prospective Ham away? Make them feel like they can do anything if they aren't an engineer. Focus the message, use a good communicator, and look approachable. - 73 de Mike KB3EIA - |
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