Radcom - December Update

It's in some sense satisfying to see more readers hitting this blog about the time of Radcom's arrival in the post each month.  Perhaps it's a quirk of searches prompted by the magazine.  Or maybe people have come to expect monthly comments upon it!

Either way, it's been interesting to see response to my musings recently on the future of the hobby within the 'letters' pages.  It's been very positive, and there are clearly a minority out there who 'get' what the concern is all about. 

Change you say?  You button-twiddling, buy-it-off-the-shelf imbeciles! 

 
One writer declares quite openly that RadCom is "editorially still the same as it's always been."  Perhaps that's true of the overall content, but at least the current editors are not censoring constructive criticism.

Disappointing in his response was the 'owner' of the GHz section.  The author spends a surprisingly numerous initial sentences claiming he's "noted" my claimed lack of material that would help an ordinary mortal - and not a lifelong RF engineer - into that aspect of radio.  Having done a bit of sounding democratic, he then concludes by saying, unless he gets any suggestions, he'll go his own way with the articles. 

Well, that's fine and dandy, then!

That's rather regrettable - and an inaccurate reflection of reality - because I sent a very polite suggestion as to content last year.  There was no reply.  Apparently, there have been some projects published for beginners.  But those haven't, frankly, been the type of projects this beginner would be able to tackle nor, I suspect, would most others.  I've yet to see hoards of people operating parabolic dishes up the local hill.

And there we go again.  The hobby is a reflection, made worse by its socio-economic make-up, of how society has developed over the past couple of decades.  Dominated by the retired, white middle class, many of whom were not only amateur radio folk, but professional electronics workers, to boot, pontificating on what real men's radio is all about.

It really won't do for the old guard to dig ever-deeper trenches whilst the number of participants in amateur radio falls off a cliff edge.  That is the mentality that dominated the argument for not allowing non-Morse literate users onto the HF bands for what seemed like eternity.  It was always a stupid position, borne of prejudice and selfish interest.  It undoubtedly held the hobby back and lost valuable interest.

And before you get on your soapbox, identifying a group of people - who just happen to be older - as being generally responsible for inertia in the hobby is not equivalent to being ageist. 

But, on the positive side, as the more stubborn and stuck-in-their-ways elders move on to a higher plane, perhaps the message to RSGB HQ that it continues to fail in its recruitment obligations and representation of those who haven't just retired from commercial electronics with a golden goodbye, will become a crescendo. 


Until then, I regret that Graham Coomber's bleating about 'change' and 'corporate identity' and so on will continue to ring hollow - and see our hobby fade into oblivion.