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

Sat Nov 11 16:09:06 EST 2017

The question of getting youth into contesting, and ham radio, is a difficult nut to crack. Two observations:

1. One big difference between contesting and gaming is that there is no such thing as defense in contesting. Yes, occasionally one may need to “defend” a run frequency, but we look down very strongly at anything that prevents a competitor from doing better than we do. We’re simply a game of doing the best we can, something found in a very few games/sports, such as golf or track.

2. Anything to get young people into contesting (not counting offspring of hams) will involve remote stations. We can’t expect anybody to invest several thousand dollars into an unfamiliar pastime, not to include the issue of real estate limitations, which include the nature of one’s home - often a very urban situation - without even considering zoning/HOA issues.

73  -  Jim  K8MR

> On Nov 10, 2017, at 10:22 PM, Eric Gruff <egruff at cox.net> wrote:
> 
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
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