The Future of Amateur Radio - Are Magazines and Societies Just Missing the Point?

It's been another windy period over here for the past few days.  When it's gusting 60, 70 or more miles per hour, it's not time to have complex, expensive antennas up in the air.

Instead, it's time to deploy simple, robust wires like my trusty G-Whip end-feds, a surprisingly effective antenna for the price, easy to deploy in seconds and yielding a near-perfect match across the 20m band.

G-Whip matched end-fed for 20m.  Up in seconds, low cost, global DX.  So why are we bombarded with super-expensive images of amateur radio?

But it's a constant source of irritation for me that, when amateur radio is in a crisis of so few taking up the hobby, far too much emphasis is going on expensive equipment that only the rich can afford.

This is a huge shame, because this evening, with only a 10m-long piece of wire, a matching circuit at the base and a rig, I'm using the latest free digital mode software to get signals into really rather remote parts of the world - all on 30W or much less.  If, sadly, like so many, you live in an urban setting and have intolerant neighbours, such an antenna is unlikely to need planning permission, and if someone really likes complaining, then it can go up and down on a fishing pole in seconds, or be attached to a chimney or such like.

So, if global DX can be pulled in with such simple equipment, shouldn't amateur radio societies, DX clubs and magazines be pushing this stuff instead?  Sellers who want to push £3000 rigs and equally expensive antennas on top of mile-high towers are only going to get away with that sort of marketing strategy for so long; give it about 10 years, and there will be few with that kind of money and the passion in the hobby left.

In other words, those selling advertising space - and those buying it - are simply rushing headlong into amateur radio oblivion in a few years' time.

It's fine to build up your station and work towards towers, yagis and so on - if you really do need them as opposed to never bothering to find out if something simpler might work as well or even better (keep low angle radiation in mind!) But I fear that for a very long time, the hobby has been dominated by the most accomplished, most complex and most expensive operators and those that furnish them with their materialistic wants.  That really is no good at all.

So it's time to ditch the glitzy, blingy, macho attitude and start coming down to earth in order to promote and save amateur radio for what it really is at the bone: self-education, experimentation and making your own stuff for little or no money.  The digital mode revolution has the capacity to catch the imagination of today's computer generation, so let's get that message out, instead of endlessly creating an image that hamming is only for the rich and retired.