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Will "no code" license result in meaningful growth?
It depends. Some years ago, I went to a hamfest/convention, and there were some ARRL bigwigs in the room. Must have been the early 90s. There had been suggestions that amateur radio didn't have the general exposure it should have had. There are huge county fairs, state fairs, and how often do you see amateur radio shown and demonstrated there? Indeed, the Smithsonian Institution had a station = NN3SI, that was on public display and in daily operation, and it disappeared!!! So finally one of the senior citizens running the event said "We put up an amateur station at (a major fair)". I'm thinking --- GREAT! "And we held demonstrations for the youngsters - like the 4-H group." GREAT AGAIN! "And we had a message fair!" Groan. The ARRL guy reads some text from a parent to his kid at home "and if you don't do your homework, you're grounded.", grasping a wrinkled "radiogram". I asked a question. When I asked it, I thought the guy was gonna die. "Well, I can understand, that a message fair may be of interest to you, and may have gotten you interested in this. But in this day of cheap long-distance and international telephone calling, and now we're in the cellular age, and online computer chatting, do you really think this is going to turn kids' heads? I mean, a MESSAGE FAIR???" He didn't know how to answer. He stumbled. Then he said , "well we weren't really trying to convince the kids to join up" or something like that. A noted media personality was in the audience and suggested that ham radio be tied into technologies that kids understand -- like, for instance, satellite tracking and communication. Show the horizon tracking and when the satellite gets to this point here, you're gonna hear voices on the radio. Fuse computer technology with ham radio technology and you'll turn the kids heads. How do you attract the new folks? Kids, adults, whatever? Forget about what turned you on to amateur radio 20, 30, 50 , 60 years ago. Try to think of something that will turn the kids' heads today, if you can. Morse code won't do it. Neither will 2 meter hand helds, not in the era of cellular technology. Packet? Who needs it, we got e-mail. Experimentation? Maybe! SOMETHING ... I'm surprised amateur television hasn't jumped up. ATV via balloon? Satellite signals? But clear your head of message fairs, or technology that got you buzzed in 1955. Don't blame the audience if they're not interested in code. Don't blame society. They want to know -- what FUN can they have? |
#2
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Will "no code" license result in meaningful growth?
"Greg and Joan" wrote in
hlink.net: It depends. Some years ago, I went to a hamfest/convention, and there were some ARRL bigwigs in the room. Must have been the early 90s. There had been suggestions that amateur radio didn't have the general exposure it should have had. There are huge county fairs, state fairs, and how often do you see amateur radio shown and demonstrated there? Indeed, the Smithsonian Institution had a station = NN3SI, that was on public display and in daily operation, and it disappeared!!! So finally one of the senior citizens running the event said "We put up an amateur station at (a major fair)". I'm thinking --- GREAT! "And we held demonstrations for the youngsters - like the 4-H group." GREAT AGAIN! "And we had a message fair!" Groan. The ARRL guy reads some text from a parent to his kid at home "and if you don't do your homework, you're grounded.", grasping a wrinkled "radiogram". I asked a question. When I asked it, I thought the guy was gonna die. "Well, I can understand, that a message fair may be of interest to you, and may have gotten you interested in this. But in this day of cheap long-distance and international telephone calling, and now we're in the cellular age, and online computer chatting, do you really think this is going to turn kids' heads? I mean, a MESSAGE FAIR???" He didn't know how to answer. He stumbled. Then he said , "well we weren't really trying to convince the kids to join up" or something like that. A noted media personality was in the audience and suggested that ham radio be tied into technologies that kids understand -- like, for instance, satellite tracking and communication. Show the horizon tracking and when the satellite gets to this point here, you're gonna hear voices on the radio. Fuse computer technology with ham radio technology and you'll turn the kids heads. How do you attract the new folks? Kids, adults, whatever? Forget about what turned you on to amateur radio 20, 30, 50 , 60 years ago. Try to think of something that will turn the kids' heads today, if you can. Morse code won't do it. Neither will 2 meter hand helds, not in the era of cellular technology. Packet? Who needs it, we got e-mail. Experimentation? Maybe! SOMETHING ... I'm surprised amateur television hasn't jumped up. ATV via balloon? Satellite signals? But clear your head of message fairs, or technology that got you buzzed in 1955. Don't blame the audience if they're not interested in code. Don't blame society. They want to know -- what FUN can they have? Well put. A message fair is about as exciting as watching the trucks unload at the grocery store. First we need to evaluate what amateur radio is. It's a hobby/service that is aimed at more or less technically inclined people. It is not Kewl. It is very cool though. It is a chance to send signals agross the world without the aid of wires or infrastructure. You can build antennas, build radios, write software, communicate via voice, keyboard or OOK Morse. You can contest, you can contact as many countries and make friends all over the world. You can explore a lifetime worth of activity. It is not much of an an activity for children anymore, although the young can take part in it. But times have changed. Not as much equipment is easily bought or built by the young'uns, and club activities are usually not set up for a mix of adults and youngsters. The demographic of new hams is similar to other technical hobbies such as Amateur astronomy, in that as a person gains more free time after the children are in college, they pursue interests that they have put off. This puts the new Ham in the 40's or older. My own experience and what I have seen since I became a ham bears this out. Age is not important. Enthusiasm is. The technical aspect of it will sell at a fairly low level until the chinese put a man on the moon, then the politico's will scream about how the US is being eclipsed technically, and we start having sputnik flashbacks. then parents may encourage their children to look at technical pursuits. I agree that the ATV ballooning aspect is a good approach for generating interest. I was heading up a ballooning effort when other ARS related activities made it take a back seat. But it has the potential for some really interesting work that amateurs can participate in. Emergency Ops? I fear that in the post Katrina world, Amateur radio emergency operations will become *******ized into people who will undergo background investigations so that they can unload trucks, take out the trash and serve coffee to the professionals. At one point I was interested in EO, but seeing the recent "how amateur radio has to change" articles that espouse the above, I'll pass. I'm pretty certain that emergency ops will eventually be handled by professionals who get amateur radio licenses. Remember that the ARS got high marks during the Katrina debacle. The pros won't forget that. No good deed goes unpunished. - 73 de Mike KB3EIA - |
#3
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Will "no code" license result in meaningful growth?
The technical aspect of it will sell at a fairly low level until the chinese put a man on the moon, then the politico's will scream about how the US is being eclipsed technically, and we start having sputnik flashbacks. then parents may encourage their children to look at technical pursuits. I agree that the ATV ballooning aspect is a good approach for generating interest. I was heading up a ballooning effort when other ARS related activities made it take a back seat. But it has the potential for some really interesting work that amateurs can participate in. Amateur TV on a balloon or maybe by a ham in a Cesna airplane would be interesting. Also, along with the NTSC link, do a digital TV one as well (the encoder and modulator side of things can be bought at not outrageous cost, and the receive end can be a consumer digital TV tuned to a "cable" channel that happens to be the ham band). "Yeah, but a cell phone does that", but not at this level of picture quality. |
#4
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Will "no code" license result in meaningful growth?
"Greg and Joan" wrote in message hlink.net... It depends. Some years ago, I went to a hamfest/convention, and there were some ARRL bigwigs in the room. Must have been the early 90s. The hamfest/convention or the ARRL bigwigs? :-) Sorry ... I had to ask ... the devil made me do it :-) ... particularly in light of the remainder of your story. 73, Carl - wk3c There had been suggestions that amateur radio didn't have the general exposure it should have had. There are huge county fairs, state fairs, and how often do you see amateur radio shown and demonstrated there? Indeed, the Smithsonian Institution had a station = NN3SI, that was on public display and in daily operation, and it disappeared!!! So finally one of the senior citizens running the event said "We put up an amateur station at (a major fair)". I'm thinking --- GREAT! "And we held demonstrations for the youngsters - like the 4-H group." GREAT AGAIN! "And we had a message fair!" Groan. The ARRL guy reads some text from a parent to his kid at home "and if you don't do your homework, you're grounded.", grasping a wrinkled "radiogram". I asked a question. When I asked it, I thought the guy was gonna die. "Well, I can understand, that a message fair may be of interest to you, and may have gotten you interested in this. But in this day of cheap long-distance and international telephone calling, and now we're in the cellular age, and online computer chatting, do you really think this is going to turn kids' heads? I mean, a MESSAGE FAIR???" He didn't know how to answer. He stumbled. Then he said , "well we weren't really trying to convince the kids to join up" or something like that. A noted media personality was in the audience and suggested that ham radio be tied into technologies that kids understand -- like, for instance, satellite tracking and communication. Show the horizon tracking and when the satellite gets to this point here, you're gonna hear voices on the radio. Fuse computer technology with ham radio technology and you'll turn the kids heads. How do you attract the new folks? Kids, adults, whatever? Forget about what turned you on to amateur radio 20, 30, 50 , 60 years ago. Try to think of something that will turn the kids' heads today, if you can. Morse code won't do it. Neither will 2 meter hand helds, not in the era of cellular technology. Packet? Who needs it, we got e-mail. Experimentation? Maybe! SOMETHING ... I'm surprised amateur television hasn't jumped up. ATV via balloon? Satellite signals? But clear your head of message fairs, or technology that got you buzzed in 1955. Don't blame the audience if they're not interested in code. Don't blame society. They want to know -- what FUN can they have? |
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