Well said Charlie.
I think take many of the skills I have learned from radio for granted.
My son looks at me and asks who taught you to do that? Much of it we
learn hands on and failure, having good elmers and groups like this to
learn from. Young folks don't get any hands on schooling. They don't
build birdhouses in school or fix motors so this is all foreign to them.
Thanks!
W0MU
On 12/18/2016 7:06 PM, Charles Harpole wrote:
Smart kid u have Mike. I have given up advocating a younger appeal
as a strategy to ARRL. The age to appeal to now days is 9. At age 9
a youth is interested in two things that ham radio provides in
abundance....
-unique and individual: one call sign IN THE WORLD as an i.d., and
chance for targeted successes along with unique chance to show
individuality. Added is being treated as an adult among real adults.
-joins a secret group: with secret Morse and secret knowledge, the
youth can be super special within a secret group.
Youth at age 9 now days wants two contradictory things that ham radio
supplies 1. to be big, grown up, individual (with no bossing parents)
and 2. to be part of a group, ideally secret, of full acceptance and
full "fitting in" no questions asked.
Please aim at age 9 when the developing personality is ready for ham
radio. However, prepare to lose most of them at about 15 when the
Internet takes over. Ham radio represents virtually everything the
modern teen and young adult NEEDS but abhors. Like: doing satisfyingly
difficult things over a longer time span (which builds so many mental
strengths like discipline, problem focus and solving, patience, and
self-reward for a self-goal). Like: shifting from instant
gratification of superficial things to gaining personal satisfaction
from deep devotion to a truly worthwhile result. Like: gaining
satisfaction for contributing to a group of live humans (field day,
club events) face to face. Like: on-air ability to rag chew about
real, interesting topics and to adapt to the other person.
Those are abilities that help provide a satisfying and long life. The
many can say in a dead end job at age 25 "I played to the top level of
3 video games, but where is my satisfaction now?" The few at age 25
can say "I built a radio station that bounced signals off the Moon,
made a computer program that analyzed failure rates in transistors,
and have a life-long friend in Gambia that I speak personally to
weekly..... and my management job uses ham radio skills (beyond
electronics) in organizing activities.
Maybe video games make good warplane jet pilots, and good eye-hand
coordination, but gee, what a vacuous endeavor for life preparation.
Contesting is NOT winning, it is the struggle that is valuable. One
can helicopter to the top of the mountain, but climbing it is very
satisfying!
73, Charly
On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 12:42 AM, W0MU Mike Fatchett <w0mu@w0mu.com
<mailto:w0mu@w0mu.com>> 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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Charly, HS0ZCW
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