[Towertalk] The Ham Radio Business

[A9xw@cs.com]

There were lots of replies.  Some marked private which is OK.  Some good 
threads came out that were not fully touched on but then, this isn't a book!

kids and lids:  I knoe from experience how hard it is as a kid to get someone 
to tell you what and how to get a license.  When I was about 6 i built a 
radio from a library book, heard some CW,  copied it down then decoded it, 
got on my bike and DF'ed my way to the hams house. Turned out to be the 
father of a school friend. I rang the bell and when he answered the door I 
told him I had built a radio (in my hand) and had heard his signal and found 
him by riding around until the signal was strongest then noticed an antenna.  
his first response was to look at the home made radio and tell me it wasn't 
his problem that it picked up his signal and not the local Am radio station.  
I finally got him to show me his stuff, got the 3 cent tour and was told it I 
could never be a ham because I was too young and didnt understand anything 
about it.   Shucks, I was only 6 and had already built several radios that 
worked from library books and one Allied radio kit. Yeah, i didn't know CW or 
ohm's law, and he wasn''t about to be bothered with a kid.  But I knew enough 
to write down dots and dashes and look up the letters in morse code, and find 
his house by listning for the strongest signal!   Later  the family moved 
vack to Chicago. I spotted a ham antenna (wire) across the street. i was just 
sytarting high school.  Similar experience, no I wasn't there to compalin 
about TVI. OK, he only worked 160  once ina while.  no he didn't care that I 
built a 160 meter receiver in a cigar box from an article in Electronics 
illustrated.  slam.   My girl friend's dad also turned out to be a ham.  not 
even a shack tour.  When I was 21 I  was working at a TV facility next to a 
Red Cross building and one nite the cars with the antennas were there so I 
invited myself to the club meeting. only one person introduced themselves.  I 
already had 3 years broadcast experience and my first class ticket.  After 
three meetings I found one person that would tech me CW and help me get my 
novice ticket.  It aint easy to become a ham. 

Where do we go fomr here.  
there have been a lot of good ideas tossed out over the years.  in the 1960's 
after getting my novice license WN8HEE, I produced and distributed a 60 
second TV PSA (public service announcement) to over 300 TV stations.  I wrote 
to ARRL and told them about it.  I got the local club on 15 Michigan and ohio 
TV stations to promote the ham fest,  biggest attendence they had despite 
blizzard.  ARRL reponse:  nothing.  I got a service award for participating 
in a Simulated emergency test.  BFD.  The city of Toledo sent me a nice 
certificate because on the way to the TV station there to discuss ham radio 
on an interview show, I happened on a auto accident and did some CPR. but had 
to call on the CB radio to get help because no one was on the local 
repeaters.  Similar experience in Terre haute when a Semi hit a VW buss head 
on and the driver was in the third row back and the truck driver was on the 
pavement after going through the windshield. 4 dead, 5 injured, one was taken 
still pinned in the seat to the ambulance  doa. 

So, if you're going to put up a repeater, do so if there are enough people to 
use it that its useful when really needed.  have a public access 911 phone 
patch if you don't bother to listen to your own machine. 

After getting  my tech ticket I recorded and sent out 13 programs for radio 
called the Marconi experiment.  it was on about 50 stations late nite. It 
included live QSO's recorded witht eh knowledge and permission of the 
stations, who would often express that they knew it would be on the radio 
show.  We did live in studio interviews (live to tape) .  We didn't have a 
bunch of UFO and conspiracy BS or psudo science, just discussions of the fun 
of ham radio and what was going on in those early days of FM repeaters and 
good band openings, DX  RTTY and such.   

managed to get into TV guide on a few occasions and a few other non ham mags. 
Not a large response, but any PR is good PR.  made it to NBC nightly news. 
Helps.  

When I owned my own radio station I broadcast a ham radio program and CW 
lessons after regular programming and before sign-off.  Don't know what the 
response was, but it was an effort.  

Now if  100 hams did this, imagine what we might have been able to do!  if 
ARRL had helped sponsor or if any of the ham manufacturers had helped sponsor 
the efforts, imagine what might have been possible.  No one within the ham 
biz lifted a finger. 

At an Industry meeting at Dayton many years ago, the producer of a TV series 
(ALF?) came in and said to the group how we could produce a TV program using 
inexpensive TV gear (the video toaster) that he was using to do the 
commercial show. Would anyone help out to defray the costs of production, 
which to meet Broadcast TV standards meant post production, audio sweetning 
and talent costs.  he had a demo tape, made a good pitch.  the room divided 
equally in half.  one half said ARRL should pay for it, the other half said 
they wouldn't pay for it.   So it never happened.  

A few years later I tried to promote hams getting LPTV licenses and not long 
ago low power FM licenses. you could cover the metropolitan market with these 
and could broadcast anything you wanted, make money and retrans NASA select, 
your local ham club meeting, other ham activities like Field Day.  Nobody did 
it.  The licenses could have been had for a few thousand in application 
costs.  Today most of LPTV stations are worth a half million to several 
million bucks.  Instead a lot became Home Shopping outlets raking in millions 
of bucks profit a year,  Trinity religion stations,  Video juke Boxes, etc.  
A low power Fm station,  100 watts at 100 feet would fit on many ham towers, 
covers a radius of 15 miles.  Will anyone put one on for ham radio?  Not 
likely. Costs 10 cents an hour to run. 

I used to give away "The Good Image Award" for hams that got good press for 
their public relations work.  I gave up after 1985 because there wasn;t 
enough "press" being generated to make a contest of it.  Not much beyond the 
field day blurb in the local small town papers. 

When it comes to promoting our hobby, most hams are our own worst enemies. 
Even the people who stand to make a buck if ham radio thrives don't want to 
help out.  "QST ads are too expensive" is the lament, "can't afford to 
advertise in QST and then have anything left for the other magazines."   QRT 
Ham Radio magazine. QRT FM Magazine, and a dozen others. 

An interesting question in my mind has always been, "Would Heathkit be alive 
and well today if the owners had been better business people instead of 
robber barons who it seems just bought the company to ransack its profits for 
other losing operations like ZENITH  bankrupt at last?"  

With CABLE channels it seems to me that it should be even easier to get some 
ham radio promotion since we don;t have to rely on a handful of network owned 
TV stations and  mega radio station groups controlling 90% of the broadcast 
airways.  have we seen the last "Ham's Wide World" movie extolling the 
virtues of tubes and CW? Lets hope so. Valiant efforts, but wrong message, it 
promoted we are behind the times, not leading the world.  The effort of the 
Seattle hams to produce a half hour TV program, well made, good intentions,  
good story and acting, but the story line was passing the CW key from  a old 
man to a young boy.  Makes us look like antique radio buffs. 

Popular movies:  Frequency.  Contact,  Made good PR, but nothing in the 
credits to point a viewer at an INFORMATION SOURCE.  Tube radios!   yeeeech.  
not what prospect hams want to see.  OK for us to warm our hands over, but 
not representative of modern ham radio. ARRL was given credit in the printed 
press as assisting in the productions (likely supplied the tube radio) but no 
on screen credits.  Lost opportunity, while the League spends thousands on 
Archie Comic Books. Does a youth that reads comic books have an interest in 
ham radio or an interest in fantasy, lazer guns, killing the Taliban or his 
school chums?   I donno.   I suggested to the producers of M.A.S.H. that 
maybe they could have an episode where the troops call home on phone patch.  
plop that hit the ground and dried up.  At least I tried!  ALF's character 
Henry was a ham and we saw him use the stuff once or twice. but the props 
were 50's and 60's hardware for an 80's TV show. hey you Hollywood hams, can 
you get some donation to the property master of newer ham gear?

So there are some anecdotes and ideas that could, might, certainly worth 
trying, help ham radio.

73

Henry AA9XW