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Author Topic: People of all ages operate ham radio. What's your age? (This is the response fro  (Read 1435 times)

NN2X

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Interesting:

People of all ages operate ham radio. What's your age? (This is the response from Eham) / December 7, 2020


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If Hams do not do something, most QSO we will be between our graves.

I tried to do something, I was interviewed for the CEO position for ARRL three times, I said repeatedly on interview, we must target the young and I had a solution, which I had performed a pilot test here in Texas. It works, but I simply don't have the resources like ARRL, But I digress

FYI: I did not get the job (ARRL CEO), otherwise, there would be a change in direction for the ARRL, rather trying to protect frequencies for Ham radio (Which is a great thing), but we can't protect something that we will not use!

Look, it is not all about Ham radio, How many of you are Engineers? Do you recall when you had your first exposure to Ham radio and you knew that would be your path...(I know this did for me)

Here is what I did to promote Ham radio

I went to the private schools, I provided a demonstration, and provided a small course..the kids loved it..

(And so did the parents!).. (Forget Public schools, way to much red tape,...Miserable experience!)

If I were the CEO ARRL, I would provide a mission to the Ham clubs across the USA and asked them to do the same, which is to target the private schools, and have a certain amount of quota (Per year) to provide demonstrations.

If for anything, those kids who are seeking a channel to become an engineer, Ham radio is the very best path...

Maybe it is time, to have another ARRL, and organization to promote Ham radio to the youth...I know others have tried. I believe the pilot test I did here in Texas, is one option that truly works.

Tell me what you all think?

Tom / NN2X / 73's
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KF4HR

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Tom - There should be ways to start your ham club youth movement without being CEO of the ARRL.

KF4HR
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NN2X

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Tom - There should be ways to start your ham club youth movement without being CEO of the ARRL.

KF4HR

It is in the numbers..I can do my part, which I have done, but it is a drop in a bucket...You need full scale effort, which this can only be via ARRL..

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K1JRF

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Hi Tom, I commend your efforts along with your idea of doing it with private schools for the reasons stated.
I don't think u need the arrl for something like this. In fact I suspect you'd be stuck in the "a camel is a horse designed by a committee thing".
New ideas are often best promoted by one person with a vision and passion to start it up. Like minded people join you ( new chapters) and you go from there.
If I may ......I like to think outside the box sometimes. Not out of any passion but just to cover the bases and be sure the thinking I am buying into is heading the right way.
In my only 4 years in the hobby as 6 decader on the planet type and  when I've heard the "youth is our future" and the grim one that says "this hobby dies with us" and I really wonder if we are off the tracks with our thinking.
Was ham ever really a bastion of youth or is it mainly a hobby for the retired? What were the age group spreads  circa 1960 compared to today? Is the hobby really driven by those that joined in their youth or is it more by those that joined in later life? I don't know the answer to all that but I wonder if our recruitment efforts would be simply accomplished by going to places where we would introduce the hobby to seniors and say empty nesters in their 40's. I seem to talk to a lot of empty nesters when I get on and call my "anyone anywhere CQ."
Is it like Genealogy .... The younger ones eyes glaze over and the old folks light up about the subject.
And .... Not saying  youth outreach is not a great idea, regardless. It is a great idea. Any of those little minds of mush that get fed the right way with tech and wonder could simply find something they enjoy for a lifetime  or they could get the bug and go into engineering or physics or maybe the next Elon  Musk could be the student you teach to call cq next week. Just wondering if the end result is not going to save our hobby..... Maybe it's bigger than all that. And smaller.
Ok I ramble...... Thanks for the brain food :)
John k1jrf
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G8FXC

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...
Was ham ever really a bastion of youth or is it mainly a hobby for the retired? What were the age group spreads  circa 1960 compared to today? Is the hobby really driven by those that joined in their youth or is it more by those that joined in later life? I don't know the answer to all that but I wonder if our recruitment efforts would be simply accomplished by going to places where we would introduce the hobby to seniors and say empty nesters in their 40's. I seem to talk to a lot of empty nesters when I get on and call my "anyone anywhere CQ."
...
John k1jrf

In my youth (forty-odd years ago) and on this side of the big pond, amateur radio was a bastion of youth. I grew up as a member of one of the big contesting clubs in Britain and the majority of members were under 40 - many under 30. Planning for Field Day was like planning a military campaign and a small convoy of vehicles would set off for the hills the day before to pitch camp, fire up the generators and attack the enemy! I was one of the youngest at 14, but most of my companions on expeditions like that were under 25.

Martin (G8FXC)
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VK6HP

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John,

One way to see the change in demographic for yourself is to download some of the ARRL, RSGB, WIA etc. magazines from the 1970s or 80s.  Leaving aside the fact that we (then) juniors generally didn't figure too much, the "movers and shakers" in the pictures are generally in their late 20s, 30s or 40s.  In fact, those same people may very well be the ones still figuring prominently in the pictures of today! 

I'm not a fan of appealing to the lowest common denominator in a race to the bottom for membership of the national bodies, although I recognize that those bodies have aspirational targets for their own and the wider ham radio viability.  One target group I, and some others I know, try to interest are the technically minded high achievers at school and university.  We'll never be killed in the rush by these people, simply because they have too many alternative paths.  However, relatively few such people can make a big difference in the innovation facet of the hobby, as they have in the past.

I don't regard this approach as inappropriately elitist: it's rather a balance to the mainstream recruitment which, in my view, is heavily slanted in the opposite direction.  It might be as simple as just doing what you can in the circles you move, whether they're academic or other circles.

73, Peter.

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NA4IT

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Well, I'm 60 and disabled. I used to try to help young hams and new hams alike. But alas, the politics of a radio club being against someone who had plenty of time to do something caused me to leave the hobby.
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KBKZ2105

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I think your crazy. 

Carry on.   
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W6BP

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Was ham ever really a bastion of youth or is it mainly a hobby for the retired? What were the age group spreads  circa 1960 compared to today?

I was a teenager when I got my license in 1966, and I can assure you there were lots of hams my age. There seemed to be a good spread of ages among licensees. Some of the older, more experienced hams wouldn't talk to Novices, but there were plenty of us newbies, so we could talk to each other.

It may be true that ham radio can perpetuate itself primarily through the recruitment of older people; I don't know. But it certainly wasn't that way when I got started.
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KD7LX

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When I was 13 and got my ticket (1983) I was the only youngster at the local club. Everybody was very kind and helpful, and they treated me like a rock star because I was such a rarity. Perhaps the demographic skewed a little younger back then, but there wasn't a crush of kids barging the doors down. The people in my Technician class were retired, or XYL's getting their license so they could talk to their spouses on the repeater ("K7OM this is N7XYL, could you stop and get a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk?"). I loved radio, and I couldn't understand how anybody else couldn't find it equally fascinating. Of course, back then, shortwave listening was a window into the world that really wasn't available anywhere else. I could use my handheld to make a phone call on the local phone patch repeater and that was quite a party trick! But to actually learn Morse code and study for a test? Only the true die-hards would bother with all of that. It has been my experience in life that people either get it, and find it fascinating, or they don't.

I know lots of very technically minded people who never gave a lick about ham radio. I was a radar technician in the Air Force, and was surrounded by electronics geeks but my peers were into Commodore Amigas and spending 2 months salary on a 30286 clone. Everyone thought my radio obsession rather quaint, even in the 80's. I can't make anybody find it interesting who doesn't naturally gravitate towards it. I first saw it as a Cub Scout when I was about 8, but I'd already spent many sleepless nights DXing on the A.M. broadcast bands.

I can only imagine how boring it must seem to a kid who's grown up not even worrying about long-distance tolls, let alone being able to instantly communicate with anybody on the planet. Even though I still feel the magic of snatching a signal from the ether, it isn't quite as exciting as listening to Radio Moscow at the hight of the Cold War.

Beyond keeping the hobby in the public eye as much as we reasonably can, I think evangelizing beyond that is a Quixotic quest. No sense flagellating about it. I don't understand wanting to ride a horse and paying to keep it alive, but there are still people who do that.

Corey
KD7LX
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K0UA

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When I was 13 and got my ticket (1983) I was the only youngster at the local club. Everybody was very kind and helpful, and they treated me like a rock star because I was such a rarity. Perhaps the demographic skewed a little younger back then, but there wasn't a crush of kids barging the doors down. The people in my Technician class were retired, or XYL's getting their license so they could talk to their spouses on the repeater ("K7OM this is N7XYL, could you stop and get a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk?"). I loved radio, and I couldn't understand how anybody else couldn't find it equally fascinating. Of course, back then, shortwave listening was a window into the world that really wasn't available anywhere else. I could use my handheld to make a phone call on the local phone patch repeater and that was quite a party trick! But to actually learn Morse code and study for a test? Only the true die-hards would bother with all of that. It has been my experience in life that people either get it, and find it fascinating, or they don't.

I know lots of very technically minded people who never gave a lick about ham radio. I was a radar technician in the Air Force, and was surrounded by electronics geeks but my peers were into Commodore Amigas and spending 2 months salary on a 30286 clone. Everyone thought my radio obsession rather quaint, even in the 80's. I can't make anybody find it interesting who doesn't naturally gravitate towards it. I first saw it as a Cub Scout when I was about 8, but I'd already spent many sleepless nights DXing on the A.M. broadcast bands.

I can only imagine how boring it must seem to a kid who's grown up not even worrying about long-distance tolls, let alone being able to instantly communicate with anybody on the planet. Even though I still feel the magic of snatching a signal from the ether, it isn't quite as exciting as listening to Radio Moscow at the hight of the Cold War.

Beyond keeping the hobby in the public eye as much as we reasonably can, I think evangelizing beyond that is a Quixotic quest. No sense flagellating about it. I don't understand wanting to ride a horse and paying to keep it alive, but there are still people who do that.

Corey
KD7LX

Your experience is almost word for word like mine except I started a little over a decade earlier, first licensed in 1971.  But everything else was all the same. There was a bunch of us at around age 16 years of age and licensed. There were a lot of 20 something, 30 something and 40 year old hams as well as the "old guys". It is NOT like it is now, with mostly us "old guys" of which I am in the over 66 club.  I think your observations and conclusions are spot on.
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73  James K0UA

KF5LJW

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If I were the CEO ARRL, I would provide a mission to the Ham clubs across the USA and asked them to do the same, which is to target the private schools,
Tell me what you all think?


OK but you will not like it one bit. That is why you are not the CEO, you are an Elitist and out of touch with reality. Only wealthy kids in private schools are good enough to be a ham. Glad they showed you the door.
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KBKZ2105

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My prediction is in 10 years the hobby will be pretty much gone as we once knew it.  It already sounds like CB radio.  I hate to say that but the old timers will be dead, the license requirement will probably go away as a last ditch effort to sell gear, then the rednecks that have blessed the bands for the last 20 years will start to die off. 

As far as the kids.  Forget it.  You can do more on a Cell phone than you ever could or can on a ham radio for 600 to a 1000 dollars and a phone plan.  They aint interested.  Believe me. 

NUFF SAID!!!

73ss
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K3UIM

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2105: You might be a wet blanket for ham radio, but then again, you might be right.  :(

When I was a kid all the local teens were interested in hot rods. Today the triple Strombergs and shaved heads are a thing of the past. The only semblance of those days are the sound of the mufflers and even that has toned down many dB's.

I grew up at a time when a crank telephone could still be found in farm houses and TV was something that only the folks up in the hilltop mansion enjoyed.

Then I heard a crystal set. ... I was addicted!

With all the electronic doo-dads available on today's market and the thrills gotten from the "killed or be killed" computer games available today, who has time to become intrigued with ham radio?

I remember, as a teen, seeing a picture of Alexander the Great and beneath the picture it said, "No more worlds to conquer". That could be said for today's youth. They've got it all already. sigh

I believe we have to enjoy whatever comes our way and be contented in life itself until something better comes along. Have fun piling up the QSO's in contests, or adding that amplifier stage to the latest project and be happy. I'm thinking that we only live twice, so keep smiling and make people wonder what you're up to.  ;D

Charlie
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Charlie. K3UIM
Where you are: I was!
Where I am: You will be!
So be nice to us old fogies!!

AA4PB

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I grew up in the farmland west of Detroit, Michigan. I got my tech license in 1959 at 15 years old. I was the only one under about 30 at the local radio club in Detroit. I was the only one in my school with a license. I started a license class after school. One kid got his novice license out of about 10 that started the class. Most lost interest after they found out they had to learn Morse.

One thing I found with the older guys back then was that many were willing to help me get started. I found help in building equipment, donating parts, answering technical questions, and providing rides to the club meetings.
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Bob  AA4PB
Garrisonville, VA
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