John Smith wrote:

Dee:

If you would chart developments and advancements in every technical
field--amateur radio would come in last; frankly, I would doubt ones
mental abilities who would even move in the direction of challenging
that statement.


Exactly right on point. Not since the 1950's has amateur radio had much
of an impact on the "radio art". Packet briefly did, but it was rapidly
eclipsed by technology.



A religious devotion to cw and a real "good old boys club" has
damaged amateur radio for decades. Personalities which have an
"anti-social bent" have been in control here far too long, calling them
just "eccentric" is far too kind.


Not CW, but a general eccentric flavor has damaged amateur radio. Since
the 1960's amateur radio has attracted the social misfits who fit in by
the virtue of having a license and their social ineptitude excused
because of the license.

Nothing wrong with a "good old boys club", it's just that it's moved
from a technical organization to a beer and belching organization with
no real roots in advancement of the art. Sitting around and talking
about scratching your testicals on 75 meter SSB has ZERO attraction to
people with half a brain, and THIS is the problem with amateur radio. It
isn't CW, it isn't lack of social skills or good hygiene, it's just that
it doesn't attract engineers and good electronics technicians because it
simply isn't challenging enough.



Let us hope that decades of damage which has been done can be
repaired quickly by the young men I am wishing and hoping to be here
with us.


Ain't gonna happen, I'm afraid. The bright young men are shooting 2.4
gig WiFi at each other and bypassing amateur radio entirely. It's too late.


Now we need to encourage bright young men from industry here, so that
we may mass produce cheap equipment and make amateur radio easy to step
into. Hopefully, china and other developing countries will find it
profitable and worth doing, to mass produce amateur equipment in a
flowing abundance. Hopefully, soon, in the future the bands will be so
congested calls are made for the bands to be expanded to accommodate all
the hams needing bandwidth. A boom like that which CB experienced in
the 70's would be most desirable, however, I do realize this is probably
too much to even hope for.



All you're going to get are people from CB. The bright young engineers
are not going to touch amateur radio because there isn't anything here
to attract them.


As soon as cw falls, I see the most important step being in
"advertising" the fact that cw is no longer a requirement. Spreading
the word and helping others to study and pass the written exam will be
key in getting the numbers we need at that time.



It's not an issue of numbers, it's an issue of why would anyone want to
become an amateur radio operator. Really now, why would you want to do
that? To talk on repeaters? To work some guy on 20 meters? The whole
hobby is passe.

If you want to attract the bright intelligent minds, you better be
prepared to challenge them. Challenge them to let them in, challenge
them when they get here. Do you think ax.25 is going to attract people?

HA!