Very interesting and good feedback.
Things I read:
Instant gratification
Visual attraction for 'mults'
No investment, no build-up, no learning curve
Start at winning level
But it will take some time before they can download the 'CQWW' App at
iTunes & GooglePlay
And yes, that would be much cheaper than building a station yourself.
What is next on their wanted list?
An App for climbing Mount Everest?
I am still believing that Hamradio contesting is about:
Slowly acquiring various skills
Faliure is an opportunity, not a burden
No CW reader, learn by discipline
Learning by doing
Sharing so many fun hours with friends all the time
"Radio" is about tuning the dial and hearing that guy on the other side
with ones own ears, using stuff you built yourself. And a damned lot more.
It is like a enjoying going on a small sailboat; there is and never will
be an *App* for "living the experience".
However,
one cannot neglect the changes of the future, and with that come other,
new perspectives.
Nothing wrong with that. In fact the assisted classes can facilitate all
of these.
And he is very right about the DOS-like-window-boxes of our contesting
software. It can be done very different.
Maybe here is an opportunity for them? There's so many game designers
nowadays.
Merry X-mas !
73 Mark, PA5MW
On 18-12-2016 18:42, W0MU Mike Fatchett wrote:
I had the opportunity to talk to my son in more detail and ask him why
contesting does not interest him. Here is what we discussed.
1. Cost to get in the game and have a chance to win is prohibitive.
You need a great station, land, etc to really win or compete. The
playing field is so unbalanced that it becomes a show stopper. For
him he has no costs when at home. I consider my station modest with a
70 ft tower and land to put up Inv L's and full sized 80m verticals
and some receiving antennas. I could do more but we have horses and
they need to roam and are hell on things in the pasture.
2. You have to invest a lot of time to get good. If he can not have a
really good station then why invest the time to get good if you are
not going to be able to really compete.
2. The tools we use to contest, logging software, packet look like old
dos programs. He called them ugly and boring. He is used to amazing
graphics in games. I found this observation interesting. I feel that
the tools we have are pretty good and give me what I want to see
readily available. I was not expecting this answer.
3. He is far more interested in using packet where he can immediately
chase things. Packet essentially gives him a list of things to do or
goals. It is more visual so more interesting. He thought that more
automated systems would be interesting. Young people and even us
older folk expect things to happen much faster. They are the
generation of instant satisfaction and some of that even rubs off on
us older folk.
4. Talking to someone over the airwaves is still pretty cool. You can
instantly talk around the world if the right condx exist, but we can
talk all over the world with our phones so it is not as amazing as it
once was.
5. CW is interesting but he was surprised that we don't have better
code readers. While he would like to learn the code time is once
again the factor. They have so many other outlets for entertainment
that it is hard to find time for all of them.
6. Results take far too long to come out
7. He proposed that all participants use a scoreboard type system.
Many of us have said this was something we need to do but have instead
met with amazing resistance and a ton of excuses why people refuse to
use it. A system where everyone can check it out and see what is
going in in the contest. We are back to visuals.
6. Playing radio in the car driving is fun because there is not much
else to do but drive.
7. He has his general license but he does not have the technical
skills or electronic knowledge to build a shack or decent station. I
am not a great teacher especially to my own kids so I take some of the
blame for this but it is hard to teach people things when they don't
want to devote much time to it. I feel a reluctance to even try to do
something without having the proper knowledge. A far cry from when I
was young and tried all sorts of silly antennas and projects that
mostly failed miserably but boy did I learn from those mistakes.
That pretty much summed up our hour long conversation and I am no
closer to figuring out how to sell ham radio and contesting to them.
I hope some will find this information helpful and interesting.
W0MU
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