[UK-CONTEST] CQ-100 et al

[Stewart Rolfe]

--- On Mon, 28/9/09, Dave Sergeant <dave at davesergeant.com> wrote:

> On PLT, as many of you know I have a short page on this and
> other EMC 
> issues at http://www.davesergeant.com/qrp/emc.htm -
> not updated for a 
> while but points out the problems fairly well. This morning
> when 
> looking at my web statistics I was a bit puzzled to see
> around 200 
> accesses from a very obscure address which turned out to be
> a gaming 
> forum - http://www.decerto-esports.eu/showthread.php?t=13825
> It seems one of the posters there had stolen my picture of
> the Comtrend 
> PLT adaptor and linked to it in his posting to extol the
> virtues of 
> these horrible things 

Dave et al,

One can now imagine hordes of gamers now embracing PLT as a means of enhancing the 'gaming experience'. How many gamers are there compared to radio amateurs??

My point is (devil's advocate?) it will be a *real* struggle to hold our position against PLT in the face of a technology which the masses find a major enhancement to their internet experience. We are a tiny minority of 'weird' hobbyists in the opinion of much of the general public, sort of lots of Tony Hancocks locked away in their attics. If the armed forces or emergency services don't suffer we are on our own and that's kind of depressing. It will take something to persuade the public of the merits of amateur radio being a breeding ground for future engineers any more and the demographics of the amateur population doesn't help either.

Is there, or will there be I wonder, a correlation between the march of PLT etc and the numbers of 'radio amateurs' moving over to CQ-100 and the like. Perhaps they would actually find PLT useful..!

Time perhaps to redefine CQ-100 as amateur communications rather than amateur radio?

73,

Stewart Rolfe, GW0ETF