[CQ-Contest] CQ-Contest Digest, Vol 179, Issue 36

[Eric Gruff]

Ward and Group,

As a casual contester, I haven't really felt like I had much to offer
regarding spurring participation and recruiting new contesters. However,
lately, one of my 16 year-old daughters has become quite the online gamer,
while her twin sister (who has often made noise, but not effort, about
getting licensed) is your typical teenage phone text/chat fiend. I have been
informally asking them and their friends about why ham radio in general
isn't interesting to them.

A few common themes/ideas I've come up with based on my casual survey are:
- Young people can do everything with their phones/tablets/PCs that the
radio can do, and don't need expensive equipment (other than buying a new
$800 phone every year as new models come out, but I didn't say that to them)
or giant antennas that their parents and neighbors won't accept. I feel
there is a degree of laziness here - hams who design and build some or all
of their own equipment probably view appliance operators like me in the same
vein.
- The social media aspect of peer group interactions is appealing, while 1:1
interactions with strangers doesn't seem all that appealing. This is a bit
of a self-fulfilling prophecy/Catch-22, where until we get more youngsters
involved, youngsters aren't going to be very interested... It's not dislike
of 'old people', but lack of a common identification with the ham
demographic. I'm 54 and still into outdoor sports and heavy metal music, and
often feel like I'm in a nursing home at ham events. I don't mean this in a
pejorative sense since I'll be there soon enough, and am already ancient
compared to the 1977 me, who as a 13 year-old hung out with my 13 year-old
pal Steve (KL7SB, who was then WB2IDP) and looked at the 50 year-old hams to
see if they were going to spontaneously die of a stroke or embolism.
- CW and SSB aren't going to compete with high resolution video and surround
sound, so contesting may have to evolve to visual modes or we will have to
find a way to combine modes like we do now for hybrid digital modes like
digital SSTV using Internet hyperlinks to the pictures. Video games have
cool visual and audio aspects, which is what kids are now used to. Asking
them to switch from Call of Duty or Madden 2047 to CW is like going from
HDTV with a 4K OLED display to a 1985 analog television playing a VCR movie.
Maybe a digital SSTV contest or some otherto-be-invented fast mode would be
better. The technology is now getting where it's feasible, but FCC
regulations on BW on HF may be problematic.
- If we can start out with some type of technical or visual enticement (and
I don't mean an unmarked white van with offers of free candy) to get
youngsters intrigued by the hobby, we can move them into contesting and
traffic handling and Em Comm and whatever once they're hooked. I see a lot
of hams get licensed as "preppers", but then the Baofeng gets tossed into
the glove box or closet, and that's that. One of the local efforts that I'm
sure is duplicated all over the world is to help the newly-licensed move
further into the hobby, and not lose the enthusiasm that usually comes just
before and after the license is obtained.
- From 1977 to 2017 (have I really been licensed 40 years?), I went from a
general coverage Yaesu FRG-7 and 15 year-old Hallicrafters HT-44 with an
end-fed long wire that filled my shack (bedroom) with RF, to a Flex 6700 SDR
with Maestro (actually two radios in one, with colorful hi-definition
panadapters), solid-state 1.5 kW amplifier and a SteppIR DB36 that can tune
almost instantly from 80 to 6 Meters without my intervention. It's all
computer-controlled, as is my logbook, and I can operate modes from CW to
SSB to FT8 to MSK144 to SSTV to ... I know many of you on the board have
similar stories - many of us worked each other as teenage hams back in the
Dark Ages. 

OK, I'll stop now. I just wanted to share some thoughts for discussion. I
know there are going to be a lot of folks here who say, "If youngsters don't
like the hobby and contesting the way it is, then too bad for them. I'm not
changing". There are others who are fatalistic and say, "Ham radio will be
dead soon. We can't compete with the other distractions." I will offer that,
even though soon after being licensed, I discovered music, cars, girls and
beer (not necessarily in that order), I stayed licensed and somewhat
interested/active in the hobby. I was not very involved in radio while away
at college (RPI, which had a great station that I never visited, not even
once), in grad school (lived at home with my radios, but rarely touched
them), and after a cross-country move, all of which were extremely
time-consuming. The reason I stayed connected to the hobby is that there was
always something new and different (I read each new QST religiously,
regardless of whether I was OTA), and the equipment was constantly evolving
to allow new modes, etc. Well, that, and because I'm a hopeless nerd.

Let's brainstorm new ways to evolve the hobby so that it's "cool" to the
next generations. And don't get me started about the recent NCIS "ham radio"
episode, which was actually a CB episode that was mis-titled.

73,

Eric NC6K


Message: 1
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2017 10:43:28 -0600
From: Ward Silver <hwardsil at gmail.com>
To: Reflector <cq-contest at contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [CQ-Contest] SS, SS and again SS...
Message-ID: <ddce7d41-0585-ccc9-2d41-55e9d809e220 at gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed

Hey Mats, don't go subterranean just yet!

 >? Just lately have been a lot of postings that, at least for me and
possibly for some other non-NA, have been ?less interesting?. That is MY
(our) problem - not a problem to the list as such

Actually, I think we have pretty much had our say about SS but I would like
to broaden the discussion to your side of the pond.? A common perception
here in NA, reinforced by photos and stories, is that EU is doing better
with attracting new, younger contesters than we are.? One of the best things
to come along in recent years is the EU-based YOTA (ham-yota.com).? Getting
a similar group going "over here" seems to be a hard sell.? I'd like to hear
more from you and others about EU attitudes and approaches that seem to be
encouraging younger contesters to get involved, whether it is CW or SSB or
digital, HF or VHF.

73, Ward N0AX