Regarding attracting a newer generation: appearances are important! The first image on the page should not have people sitting on a toilet in what is obviously a bathroom. It's kind of crazy someone thought that was a good idea. Fear of being a loner who eats lunch in a school bathroom stall keeps kids away from electronics and hobbies like these.
Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving
51–60 of 216 posts
Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
To be honest, I see this more as a baby boomer thing than a Gen X thing. Gen X who are into technical things tend to be into digital things. I mean hey, give me a commodore 64 hooked up to a modem and I'm gonna have a good time. Other digital modes are all the same to me. I'm Gen X and I'm 50, and I'm gonna whine more about k-pop than digital modes.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but no one cares what GenX thinks. Apparently we didn't throw enough temper tantrums as children.
Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving
#53A timely blog post for me: A close friend who is the same age as me (and an EE) has been trying to get me into Ham for over 10 years. I finally became interested and bought a $25 radio (BaoFeng UV-5R) on Amazon ... only to learn that I couldn't talk to my friend on Day 0 because 1. he lives >20 mi away, 2. no line of sight and had to learn about repeaters, and 3. I have to learn technical and cultural nuance of Ham before being allowed to speak. The proposition value that Ham is not an "old IM client" and instead a toy for analog protocol nerds took a long time to understand.
Edit: added radio model, fixed price
Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving
#54I 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…
This is why I've swerved off of getting into HAM. By popular perception (in my circles, and perception doesn't necessarily reflect reality) it's a chatroom for boomers (not necessarily a bad thing) waiting to report you to the FCC for any kind of experimentation (a bad thing), with a cost of entry of at least a hundred dollars for equipment that supports a fixed set of protocols with a very narrow use-case.
Radio just seems top closed off to get into asanything other than a passive listener.
Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving
#55As 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.
If the draw is just talking to people, you may be very disappointed. Unless you are the specific target demographic for 2m repeater crowd or the "broadcasters" in the HF, you will be shunned at best.
But hey, you may be entertained by hearing old farts complain about immigrants!
Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving
#56A timely blog post for me: A close friend who is the same age as me (and an EE) has been trying to get me into Ham for over 10 years. I finally became interested and bought a $25 radio (BaoFeng UV-5R) on Amazon ... only to learn that I couldn't talk to my friend on Day 0 because 1. he lives >20 mi away, 2. no line of sight and had to learn about repeaters, and 3. I have to learn technical and cultural nuance of Ham b…
I remember somebody saying Ham is just a bunch of grumpy old retired guys complaining about the government. Someone else said wait, we aren't all retired!
Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>You can definitely do that for the 2 and .75 meter bands. $30 off of Amazon for a BaoFeng. I'm welcome to being corrected, however my understanding is that I'd need a full license to legally broadcast on those bands.
Over here at least (Sweden), there are around 10 channels that are allocated to hunting radio and PMR, which you can use without a license.
Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest, I see this more as a baby boomer thing than a Gen X thing. Gen X who are into technical things tend to be into digital things. I mean hey, give me a commodore 64 hooked up to a modem and I'm gonna have a good time. Other digital modes are all the same to me. I'm Gen X and I'm 50, and I'm gonna whine more about k-pop than digital modes.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but no one cares what GenX thinks. Apparently we didn't throw enough temper tantrums as children.
It's hard to agree with that line of reason. In my observation, GenX marketed themselves as the generation of apathy, and so eventually people became apathetic about them.
Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>You can definitely do that for the 2 and .75 meter bands. $30 off of Amazon for a BaoFeng. I'm welcome to being corrected, however my understanding is that I'd need a full license to legally broadcast on those bands.
Ah, sorry! I misunderstood what you meant. You are correct.
You're likely aware that you can get CB/MURS/FRS type radios without a license, but that wouldn't help that much. It would be nice to have a small slice of each ham band that would be available to non-licensed folks, but the hardware would be tricky, you'd have high physical capability (and cost) but it would have to be locked down to basically a 'slice selector', speaker and microphone...basically what you get with FRS radios.
Neat idea though!
Re: Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving
#60I 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…
I got involved with amateur radio ~20 years ago as a teenager Handled radio traffic for various marathons.
Was a bunch of 60-70+ people and a few teenagers.
Got briefly involved a few years ago. Still dominated by 60-70+ year olds. Me and a friend in our early 40s were the “kids”