The Future of Amateur Radio - The 'Youngsters' Debate.

In response to a thought-provoking and well-presented discussion on attracting youngsters to the great hobby of ham radio, I submitted the following response to the RSGB this morning:


Youth Proposals.

I was very impressed with Graham Muchie's missive on how best to revive the hobby, which prompts numerous questions to be asked.

I doubt I would ever have taken an interest in amateur radio were it not for CB in the early and mid-80s.  Now, stop and think about your reaction to the term 'CB'.  In most people, it's negative.  An undisciplined free-for-all using silly and needless jargonese.

Yes, CB was all those things, but only after you had learned how to put up an antenna, select the right coax, use an SWR meter and solder a PL259 plug.  And there you are: the essential basics of knowing how to put an amateur station together.  Whilst we might want it to be more technical and mysterious than that, it really doesn't need to be.  Radio is not, as it used and arguably still is seen by some, a club of exclusivity. 

OK, the fraction of CBers taking more of an interest in the technical side was probably fairly low.  But all of them had to know something about how to 'connect up', and all of them got to realise the benefits and limitations of radio transceivers in the home.  Those going illegal and operating 'linear'-assisted AM CB even saw the benefits of different modes and output powers.  Illegal, but they were learning.

In other words, some seeds of interest were sown amongst a fairly large proportion of the population.  More of those seeds would have germinated had there been no rabid antagonism surrounding whether or not you were Morse-literate, and a protectionist campaign to keep HF to the 'old-timers', aided by the option only of doing the full (and thereafter largely useless) electronic theory course, with no entry level at all.

How do we get kids to climb the amateur radio ladder?  Image: mine.

So, coming back to your suggestions, I would say that a simple, basic licence that focuses on the basic essentials of reasonably disciplined operating and gets youngsters onto 2m or even 6m and upwards should urgently be put in place.  My daughter of eight tried the Foundation Licence, but failed.  Because she hadn't learned?  No, because the exam wording, for a kid, was too convoluted for her to grasp what she was being asked about.   When I asked her the questions in a simple way, she would invariably know the answers.

As to demonstrating, I think this will always tend to attract people who want to show off what they, rather than someone else new to the hobby can do.  You nod at this in your article, and rightly so.  Only a selected group of people operating a well-aimed outreach campaign in large county shows, exhibitions and so on, who are known to be capable educators and motivators, can succeed with demonstrations.  The bloke who sits at home on 40m talking to his ageing mates up the road isn't going to cut it - and hasn't!

Let's combine the two foregoing and say that we need a much more simple first licence that abandons the dated approach and terminology of testing, where we can show youngsters that very high frequency doesn't mean very limited frequencies.  Do they know that two £35, 5W Chinese FM handies and two stick-and-wire quads can get them talking through a satellite every 90 minutes?  Do they know that they can bounce signals off shooting stars?  Do they know they can work the network of repeaters across the UK, and access distant ones with just 2W?  There is plenty more that they can do that not even I know about.

Much maligned by hams, but CB gave the radio bug to many in the 80s and 90s.

 
I don't think that kids entering the hobby, or even many already within it, want to focus on building transceivers, and I don't think this is the best thing to include in a basic licence syllabus.  How many of the total ham population really do build a transceiver?  I guess very few.  It should be part of the wider, career-long learning of an operator, but I think the debate about homebrew transceivers is really just an indication of the age of those involved in the debate, rather than what youngsters want to get involved in. 

And finally, moving on from that last point, I wonder what place in all this debate a proper understanding of what real young people feel about radio, and what takes their interest?  There is a certain feeling that it's middle-aged radio operators musing about what they found interesting as youngsters, not what today's youngsters find interesting.  Has the RSGB commissioned a proper, scientific survey?  It may wish to consider doing so.