"Mike Coslo" wrote in message
...
Many people lament that there is not enough interest in Ham radio by
young people.

What chance ham radio had to interest young people is loooong gone.
(...of course arrl will never admit to this, to them it's still sometime in
1965)

One of the reasons that is given very often is that Amateur radio is in
some sort of competition with the Internet. Let us look at this theory.

Here's another 'white paper' theory:

Kids & INTERNET: Instant Messager, Chat Rooms, Videoconference
in REAL TIME with your friends, Play games (Halo for example) over
a Network with your friends, send messages via cellphone to e-mail and
visa-versa, computers are cheap $300 for a P4 fully loaded at
C-shows...etc...etc...

Kids and HAM RADIO: Radios can be expensive, big antennas needed if
you want HF, all to talk to are sour old men (or retro-bigots if your on
75 Meters at night) who hate kids for the most part, packet-radio a joke
at 9600 baud (circa 1981 speed!!) compared to DSL, radios expensive to
fix if they break and most radios (except yaesu) are built like a cheap VCR
kids on ham few and far between.....etc

any questions?

(it sucks eh?)