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Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

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Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#21

Post by jcims »

woofcat wrote: post #4

As someone who has looked on into the hobby in Canada. I feel there needs to be another class for people who just want to use a store bought radio. I have to take time to study an exam about how increasing x changes y, and all these other fun facts about radio equipment. However the draw for me is talking to people, not building radio equipment. Just my two cents.

You can definitely do that for the 2 and .75 meter bands. $30 off of Amazon for a BaoFeng.

HF and the bottom half of VHF is where you start needing more (expensive) equipment and the antenna setup begins to really dominate performance.

The other problem is that you'll go through all of the expense for a turnkey radio, get on the bands and all you hear people talking about is their radio setup.

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#22

Post by JshWright »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #20

Someone help me understand what is the exciting thing about HAM cause this article doesn't do anything for that. My first exposure to HAM was back in ~2000 when I started working at a car stereo shop and the owner (NU5K) was huge into HAM. He was an asshole most of the time, but very knowledgeable and loved to tinker with different HAM components both benchtop and mobile. Everytime I would try and get interested the…

Your last paragraph is exactly the reason I enjoy being a ham (it's not an acronym, BTW). I get to tinker and constantly stretch my knowledge and technical skills.

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#23

Post by vidanay »

mikece wrote: post #5
hibby wrote: post #2

I saw this shared on Twitter this morning, and had some thoughts: While the graph is good, it is specific to the US and ignores the fact that a large amount of the amateur population is 50+ - the hobby is healthy now, but there's an age crisis coming soon. It doesn't really reflect the health of the entire hobby, globally, just a specific subset. Millenials aren't young any more, I'm millenial and I've held a ham lic…

> a large amount of the amateur population is 50+ Yes, and a lot of these folks take a "get off my lawn" approach to anything that's different to how amateur radio has been done for the last 50 years. Try talking up metro-wide mesh data network or using packet radio for anything other than APRS you get the "Why would you want to do that?" Once upon a time amateur radio operators MADE their own equipment: it was the m…

There's also more than a fair share of OM spouting off about their gout, dieabeetus, negroes, and Jeezus.

Phone frequencies are a real cesspool most of the time.

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#24

Post by geocrasher »

For as long as I can remember there have been people worried about the Old White Guys Club aspect of ham radio. "ham radio is dying!" they say. Well, the old guys keep pushing daisies and younger guys (not always young!) come along and do things. It's how it goes. And not all of us are club affiliated ARRL card carrying robots. I eschew all of that in favor of just having fun doing my own thing, and one thing I've learned: There are a lot of hams just like me.

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#26

Post by mikece »

wrkronmiller wrote: post #19
rthomas6 wrote: post #17

I think a lot of young(er) people like me who would otherwise get into ham radio are being sniped by SDR. You can buy a $30 piece of hardware and listen to planes talking to the airport, see weather imaging from satellites, intercept and read pager messages, listen to emergency and police radio, listen to all channels of consumer grade walkie talkies, and also just generally see the invisible world of wireless commun…

As someone who holds but doesn't use a Technician Class license, I completely agree. As someone commented below, sending encrypted data over HAM frequencies is not allowed (IANAL), which also rules out a lot of interesting projects and use-cases.

There is a proviso that goes with that. If you're doing a metro-area mesh network (some of the WiFi overlap with the 2.4GHz amateur band!) you can use WEP or WPA as long as the password for joining the network is "publicly available." Putting the current password on the website for the club/group running the project is sufficient to demonstrate, for FCC purposes, that the communications are open.

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#27

Post by mikece »

JshWright wrote: post #22
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #20

Someone help me understand what is the exciting thing about HAM cause this article doesn't do anything for that. My first exposure to HAM was back in ~2000 when I started working at a car stereo shop and the owner (NU5K) was huge into HAM. He was an asshole most of the time, but very knowledgeable and loved to tinker with different HAM components both benchtop and mobile. Everytime I would try and get interested the…

Your last paragraph is exactly the reason I enjoy being a ham (it's not an acronym, BTW). I get to tinker and constantly stretch my knowledge and technical skills.

I've always hated the "HAM" moniker and have always been pedantic about referring to it as "amateur radio."

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#28

Post by jedimastert »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #20

Someone help me understand what is the exciting thing about HAM cause this article doesn't do anything for that. My first exposure to HAM was back in ~2000 when I started working at a car stereo shop and the owner (NU5K) was huge into HAM. He was an asshole most of the time, but very knowledgeable and loved to tinker with different HAM components both benchtop and mobile. Everytime I would try and get interested the…

It's a gigantic hobby that touches a lot of different nerdy things.

First of, there's a wack-ton of science you can just dive straight into, with a lot of literature around because ham's been around for a long time.

Are you in to EE and hacking? Cool! You can build your own radios!

Are you into pushing boundries? DX (chasing long distance contacts) is for you.

There's QRP (super low power) where you can talk to an amazing amount of people over morse code with just 5 watt and a deadnuts simple transmitter. It's like making a cellphone with a 9v and an altoids tin and talking to someone halfway cross the country.

There's also the civic duty aspect, there even folk with just handie talkies (walkie-talkie-sized ham radios made for shorter-distance trasmission) can do their part in a natural disaster.

But above all that, there's a really hands-on feel to making something out of bits and bobs and suddenly someone is talking to you!

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#29

Post by joeclark77 »

Learning about ham radio was one of my new "pandemic hobbies" and I got my license in June. I don't think it's dying at all; in fact, to me it's much more exclusive than Internet chatting or playing with Arduino. Both because of the licensing requirement, and because you need to learn something about electronics. That exclusivity is a draw! Similarly, learning CW (morse code) has become more popular since they dropped the requirement -- people like to learn things that are a challenge!

I have kids aged 9 and younger, and their friends are starting to get cell phones. I'm hoping I can get them to earn their technician licenses so I can give them cheap radios instead; then they can have their own "social network" without all the harmful stuff a smartphone gives access to.

Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving

#30

Post by iNate2000 »

rthomas6 wrote: post #17

I think a lot of young(er) people like me who would otherwise get into ham radio are being sniped by SDR. You can buy a $30 piece of hardware and listen to planes talking to the airport, see weather imaging from satellites, intercept and read pager messages, listen to emergency and police radio, listen to all channels of consumer grade walkie talkies, and also just generally see the invisible world of wireless commun…

That’s exactly how I got into amateur radio.

First a receiver and fascination with all the signals I could find. Then the discovery that for a couple hundred dollars I COULD TRANSMIT TOO???!!!!!!

Except that my receiver was a “police scanner” and my transmitters were various “walkie talkies” (first CB, then 2m amateur repeaters.)

What you are describing IS radio as a hobby.

If SDR had existed back then, I would have totally tried it out. It’s just Moore’s law making insanely advanced technology accessible.

I love living in the future!

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