"Mike Coslo" wrote

|
| I doubt L'il Kim or Brittany Spears or Justin Timberlake will ever be
| hams, or (name your popular type person) will ever even think about
it.
|
| Well, that's just fine. Ham radio wasn't, isn't, and never will be
| Kewl. And that's kewl by me. If those type people were involved in it,
I
| probably wouldn't be.
|

Why wouldn't you be? I don't personally know the three young people you
mention and I'll concede that I haven't paid a great deal of attention
to them, but my impression is that they are bright, intelligent,
successful, "with it" sorts who have influence among a wide segment of
the population, particularly young people. Seems that the involvement
of "those type people" could be one way (obviously not the only way) to
attract people to the Amateur Radio Service.

Personally I find myself in direct disagreement with "wasn't, isn't, and
never will be Kewl". (Thanks to WB8IMY for some of his thoughts) In
case you didn't know, belief in magic is a necessary requirement for all
Amateur Radio operators. Of course, you won't see a question concerning
magic or metaphysics on the test you take to obtain your license, but in
your heart you will come to believe in that powerful, intangible force.

All of us in the hobby have felt its influence at one time or another.
Some night when the band is dead as a doornail you'll be tuning
aimlessly, not expecting to hear a single signal because NOTHING could
be coming through at that hour. But then, rising out of the noise like a
ghost, there will be a faint call from another stalwart explorer
thousands of miles distant. You pounce, establish contact and both of
you marvel at the fact that the conversation is taking place at all. A
few minutes later, however, the signal vanishes as quickly as it came.
Your rational mind will shrug it off as a quirk of propagation, but that
little tingle in your gut will tell you otherwise.

Hey, that's Kewl!

If you could travel back in time 1000 years to 1004 AD, you'd probably
be burned at the nearest stake for even suggesting that two human beings
could communicate with each other over great distances without a
physical connection. No doubt they would accuse you of dabbling in
magic -- and they'd be right!

As Amateur Radio operators, we work feats of magic every day. Many of
us have become jaded about our powers and we tend to dismiss them as
commonplace. We hardly think twice when we use our equipment to sommon
the elemental forces of the universe. But every so often we need to
pause and remind ourselves of what we are really doing. We need to
remember the essence of what drew us to our unusual avocation in the
first place: the wonderful magic of wireless communications.

Hey, that's Kewl!

Those of us who play at RadioSport contesting regularly employ our
station engineering and operating skills in weekend-long games of
world-wide electronic splatball with tens of thousands of other
participants aged from pre-teen to near 100.

Hey, that's Kewl!

I could go on and on.....

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de Hans, K0HB