Does the RSGB have ears? And more FT8 moaning.

Well, it's early morning after storm Hannah thundered past.  We were lucky in that the worst winds of over 140km/h passed slightly south of us.  We saw 'only' 100km/h or so.

With an early rise to get all antennas back up in the air at dawn this morning, I had an idle look at the Facebook page for the RSGB.

I don't think the RSGB is getting it.  It has a ream of photos at the moment of silvery shields and cups being handed over from an ageing RSGB president (I prefer the use of lower case 'p'), to equally or even more ageing recipients.  I'm sure the recipients have done something worthwhile, but not something that the general (or even the radio) population have any interest in.

Indeed, so lost in the Glorious Past of British Empire is the RSGB that it doesn't see much wrong with the presentation of 'The Calcutta Key', this year presented to Nick Henwood (you might recognise him as a past RSGB President).  'Calcutta' was the anglicised version of the city properly known as 'Kolkata' (which was reinstated in 2001). 

Whilst this is probably just an embarrassing oversight, the English in general are never remotely willing to try respecting and pronouncing 'Johnny Foreigner' names, whether in India, Wales, or anywhere else.  It's all part of the rejection of local values and, thus, domination over them.

Current ageing RSGB President (right) gives ageing past RSGB President, Nick Henwood, his award.

Worse than this unending 'old men's care home' feel of the RSGB is the fact that it doesn't seem able to critically assess its social media performance.  For a society with some 20,000 members, having only one person 'like' most Facebook posts means you are getting something really wrong.  But the society just keeps serving up this rubbish simply, it seems, because it has little else to offer.  The story is much the same over on Twitter.

So there's no need to rush to join the RSGB to see if it's changed its old-man committee style by now.  It really hasn't - and now has only one woman on its Board of Directors of eleven people.

Meanwhile, on other Facebook pages dedicated to digital modes we, rather inexplicably, find people complaining bitterly about how 'FT8 is just computers interfacing via RF', and how only an SSB QSO is really worth having.

Well, hobbies, especially those dominated by older men, are always full of grumpy arguments as to why one person is right, and the rest of the world is, apparently, just dumb.  But the argument against digimodes is really short-sighted, and represents a failure of retired folk to appreciate their existence is not shared by everyone.

In my household, at least over the past several years, young children have been in bed by 8pm.  A good night's sleep goes some way to explaining their success in education.  It would be nice to have a SSB QSO after 8pm, or even 2am.  But it wouldn't be fair to everyone else in the home to be shouting '3 and 0.  THREE AND ZEEEEROO, OK?' down a microphone to some far flung DX station. This problem simply doesn't occur with digimodes.  You can operate any time of day or night without disturbing even the lightest sleeper.

So, next time you find yourself absolutely sure about your point of view on digimodes, stop and have a think as to whether you really considered all the different aspects of their use.