Amateur Radio Politics

While recently dealing with a major hubub at a club I used to preside over, I was reminded just how dirty politics can get, especially Amateur Radio politics.

We like to thing that we're a world-wide fraternity of like-minded experimenters, but more often than not, we get set in our ways over something or another and we end up fighting among ourselves over ridiculous things.

In Arizona, for instance, there are two rival repeater coordination groups that have arisen in the last two decades who constantly war over frequencies and mountain-top transmitter sites. And I do mean war.

I had to accompany a friend on a repeater purchasing trip a couple years back and was forced to attend a secret meeting of one group. Throughout the luncheon, the entire converstation was nothing but hateful and derogatory comments about the other group and plans to get back at them. I kid you not when I say that I even heard one cliche planning a midnight raid on a rival repeater to cut the coax leads to their antennas!

Is this Ham Radio?

Or how about division within a club?

That's even more exciting because you get to see the soap-opera-like inter-relationships between supposed members and who knows best on how to run a club, or how to spend the money, etc. The club I used to chair is having a problem with who controls the webpage, who has access to the rooftop antennas, and exactly who gets to call themselves president. After I left, they had no fewer than 2 shotgun elections that changed the entire leadership. Talk about revolution! And the worst part is that it's a University-affiliated club.

I worry sometimes that our internal bickering will become so bad that the University will simply tell us to get lost. NO MORE HAM RADIO CLUB HERE! You're too much trouble for us to deal with...

The parallels to the hobby in general are uncanny. Even I, a die-hard DXer and avid QRP addict, have come close to abandoning this lifestyle we call Amateur Radio.

In all fairness, people, it is supposed to be a HOBBY. Something we do for fun? Not something that sends us to an early grave because we worry too much about what Barney, down the road is saying about your repeater signals' interference. And you wonder why hams are dying off at an alarming rate and why the kids don't want anything to do with the hobby?

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