It's been a while, but...

There hasn't been an awful lot of time for radio of late. Summer activities are many, and the propagation on HF isn't too spectacular, as is often the case.  144 and 50MHz are doing pretty well, and these are the bands of interest for me for the coming years.

One radio-related thing I've been re-engaging with is attendance at the local club. I joined the club some years ago, but didn't stay for long due to the all-too-typical arguments between competing, ageing members and a rather dull line-up of evening speakers. 

A second attempt to give it a go ended very quickly, before I'd even gone past the front door. The years-long complaints about other members were the hot topic of the day as everyone waited for the door to open. I left, bitterly disappointed.

This third attempt came a good three or four years later. Most of the interpersonal clashes had now been resolved by people leaving for other club pastures, or death. But I quickly learned that some things hadn't changed at all.

During a Marconi field day, one member decided to make 'feeling breasts' gestures in the presence of a female. He didn't try to touch anyone, so let's keep it in perspective. But the mere belief that this sort of behaviour is acceptable was really very worrying. Even without this crap, the people operating the radio were completely unwilling to let anyone else have a go, however briefly.

Then I heard someone at a club evening - he works in a church, of all places - say how terribly difficult it is to cope with transgender people. What he really meant was that he thought the whole trans thing is make-believe nonsense. Which is again very incompatible with modern life.

And, of course, there's always the casual racism. Making your racism mildly-worded doesn't make you not racist, I'm afraid.

So, I attended maybe three meetings and a field day event. And that was it. Someone suggested I should stay and try to change their attitudes. But that's never going to work. It will only lead to accusations of a new member arriving to destroy their club, and all was fine before he arrived. That, plus the rather poor odds of getting anyone above 75 years old to change their pathetically simple responses to complex life questions. Life, sadly, is just too short to waste on preaching to the very seriously hard of thinking.

I'm afraid that this club, like so many, is just a watering hole for people who have never moved on from the 1970s. In Japan, this generation is labelled 'Dankai' - a term that could catch on here. None of it is attractive to people with a good upbringing, education and basic civility. Though very rare, it's possible that a young female might wish to find out about radio through attending a radio club like this. What on earth would such a person think, and what might they experience if they hung around?

This is the last time I will ever attend a radio club locally. It's time these people and their attitudes passed away in one way or another; it really won't do. We already have a poor image amongst the public as anorak weirdos who put up flying bedsteads over their gardens. The last thing we need is clubs like this, populated by people who only confirm the public's worst fears.