Interest of the Affluent (IOTA)

IOTA, the Islands on the Air programme run by the RSGB, celebrates its 50th anniversary during 2014.

I was briefly interested in IOTA, until I found out Anglesey had been dismissed from the list because it is only about 150 metres from the Welsh mainland.  The RSGB decided to redefine the word 'island', which is normally given in dictionaries as "land surrounded by water", and not "land that has to be so far from a mainland." I quickly dismissed IOTA as being of very little merit.


To mark the 50th anniversary event, the RSGB is holding a big 'convention' at Windsor in July.

The majority of the UK population not living anywhere near London - and who bemoan the very high costs of getting and being there - will, predictably, cast yet another eyebrow skyward that the RSGB is holding this event in the big city.

But, more important than this is the clear message, intentional or otherwise, being sent out by IOTA/RSGB in the choice of venue.  Beaumont House - actually an old landed gentry estate near Windsor - is what we might call a rather exclusive place.

Secondly, the programme of events, as given in the March 2014 RadCom edition, boasts of  a "welcome of guests followed by a celebration dinner."  Sounding RSGB-familiar yet?  A bit of middle-class black tie-ism?  Surely not!

Apparently, and this is borne out by mentions on the air, a "quite large number of Americans" will be attending.  Nice, if you can afford to cross the Atlantic to one of the most expensive cities on Earth for a get-together about, erm, amateur radio.

After the meat of the 'convention' (when did we start having conventions in Britain?) has begun, you will get treated to a "Gala Dinner" with "musical entertainment".  Sounds like a right excuse to let your hair down.  Or not.

The Centenary group photo (linked directly and (C) RSGB). 

Perhaps most revealing of how the amateur radio elite has aged and failed to keep up with the times is the reassurance that a "partners' programme" is to be organised.  This seems to mean 'wives' programme', taking in a nice comfortable visit to Windsor, where no doubt the rich Americans will expect the Queen to hand them a cup of tea.

And if you're really keen, then someone will arrange an IOTA flotilla down the river, in a mini-reenactment of the miserably wet and windy Jubilee boatfest of 2012.  How terribly quaint.  How terribly old people-esque.

According to the RSGB whoop-la, trying to stir-up spending on this ludicrous celebration of nothing at all, the convention is "not just for returning visitors but for new ones who want to enjoy the camaraderie of IOTA island chasers and activators, mingling together and discussing their experiences."

The Queen's water-going vehicle will convey IOTA conventioneers (subject to sufficient interest)

 
Lovely, if you like that kind of thing - and you can find £249 per couple.  If you come from up north, don't have a blazer impeccably polished daily by a wife called Marjorie or something similarly 1950s, and aren't a member of the Rotary Club, then you can join the Oiks and ex-CBers Fringe Festival, I'm sure.

So there you have it.  If you are a bloke (and you will invariably be a bloke) who likes operating from an island location, you can only become a true IOTA man by being a part of the Dinner Party set.  Only rich, mostly white and retired men need apply.  Wives can visit some castles and faux olde-worlde shops.


Look again at that RSGB centenary dinner photo.  Not a single darker-than-pure white face amongst them.  And, with extremely few exceptions, all well into retirement.  That is the troubling fact that has faced the RSGB for years, and one it has failed to overturn.

Again and again, I find myself returning to the same conclusion: I like the idea and aims of the RSGB, but the way it pans out in reality smacks of something akin to UKIP - with an interest in radio.  I can't say I want this kind of 19th century ideology to continue into the 21st century.  It really has to change beyond words of intent, for fear those words simply become the marker of intransigence.

IOTA is about tents, roughing it and Heath-Robinson antennas in the wind.  Not black ties.

The RSGB is aiming to attract those visitors to Friedrichshafen 2014 (now much better than the 1940s version, where it was a Nazi resort and major hub for concentration camp workers) who may like to pop across to Blighty for a spot of tea afterwards.

So far as I'm concerned, IOTA is just another manifestation of RSGB central.  Turning a simple hobby of twiddling radios into a select society of 'respectable' people.  I should imagine that the vast majority of IOTA chasers would and will rather spend the anniversary spitting half-chewed bits of sandwich into their mics on a beach, not "mingling" on a lump of slightly higher ground above the flooding Thames in London.