Stephen
Thanks for sharing your insights.?
My 2 cents worth. I'm in my 50s, with young kids at home. Just passed my license exam thanks to some encouragement from W8TEE.?
Foremost, younger folks don't use voice much at all. Text, Facebook, email or video chat. Since that's what people like, that's the direction ham radio has to go if it is to grow.?
Honestly I'm little interested in voice myself. Digital modes are ok, but not too exciting because they are so limited. I keep learning and trying new stuff.?
What really interests me and my kids is telecommand and telemetry. They are useful tool. Scant little is available to novices like me. So my few past projects are more failure than success. ?I have a pile of microcontrollers that lost their magic smoke.?
On Google. You get the results because of search engine optimization. ARRL and others pay to rank high in the results. A private user has to get a lot of traffic to overcome it.?
Outreach has to center on topics of interest. Like email without internet, etc. Video tutorials are popular with lots of people (tho I prefer written instructions with photo illustrations).?
I like the hobby a lot. My boys like to "help" make things like antenna and little circuits from Jacks book. I hope it encourages them to learn and explore.?
Lists like this are useful for novice learners. Thanks to all who contribute.?
I would like to know what books are best for telecommand and telemetry experiments.?
In closing up a random post
I'll just summarize that I tell my boys and friends that radio is what makes most of our modern conveniences work, so it's fun to learn and build stuff. Parts aren't terribly expensive so it's good entertainment.?
-John?
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On Dec 15, 2017, at 12:24, Stephen Harrison <
sdharrison.9@...> wrote:
I'm 28, maybe I can share a bit of insight, being a millennial...
I was first introduced to ham radio probably 20 years ago in cub
scouts, found it fascinating.? The cost of entry was always the
issue for me.?
In college I started playing around with the RTL-SDR dongles
(~$25) and got really interested in decoding or listening to
everything out there.. shortwave, air band, adsb, trunked p25,
pagers, sstv, etc.? I built a lot of different antennas in this
time and also learned a ton about radio and programming, mostly
through reading websites and experimenting.?
I've always had a CB around for work or other reasons, and
whenever I'd hear a signal from across the country I thought, "wow
I really need to get in to ham radio, that's really cool."? I
think about 3 years ago I came across the Baofeng HTs (~$35, yes I
know..) and decided to finally get licensed.?
I used an app on my phone to study.? I'm a civil engineer, but
the first few years of engineering school have a lot of overlap
and I found the test to be very easy.? Probably the most fun I had
was working SO-50 with a homemade yagi and my 5w HT shortly after
I got my license.? Living in an apartment made it difficult to
come up with a good HF antenna scheme.? Eventually I did get kind
of bored with it.?
After moving to a house with space for an HF antenna, I came
across the bitx40 which was a nice, affordable reason to go after
my General.
I've tried to get a few friends in to it but so far it hasn't
stuck with any of them.? One friend and I set up dipoles in our
attics and put CBs in our houses so we could talk to each other,
but that's as far as it went.? Another friend actually did get his
Tech but still hasn't bought a radio.? I demonstrated working
SO-50 to another friend who thought it was cool but wasn't really
interested in pursuing a license.
Maybe that will help provide some insight?
Steve
On 12/15/2017 11:24 AM, Jack Purdum via
Groups.Io wrote:
I changed the topic
to narrow the focus. You're right, Joe, the social media sites
have a lock on young people. My club gives the FCC exams every
month (except Dec.) for free and we always have people show up;
sometimes as many as three dozen. Most are going for the Tech
license to get their toe wet. Then they buy a 2M HT and we never
see them again. I did run into one guy almost a year later and
asked how he was enjoying his license. He said: "I haven't done
anything for the past several months. It doesn't even let me do
what my cell phone does." We need to get Tech's more than just a
small slice of 10M in the HF spectrum. Otherwise, I think they are
missing out on 90% of what ham radio has to offer. When I was a
Novice, we had small chunks of HF (e.g., 40M) to play with. True,
you were rock-bound and limited to 75W and CW, but I spent almost
all of my time on 40M. Britain has had more success than we have
with young people, and I think part of the reason is because they
give their Tech-equivalent hams small slices of spectrum on all
bands, including HF. They are limited to 5W, but at least they can
chase DX. Other than the rare atmospheric events, DX on 2M is a
couple of counties away with the HT that most end up buying.
I look around at my club and I can almost hear the arteries
calcifying. I can say that 'cuz I'm two years younger than dirt so
I know the aging membership issues quite well. We need some
younger members; perhaps younger than those who are recently
married and starting their families. The real solution: I don't
know, but there are things we can do. I have a FB account, but
probably use it twice a year. I'm not on Twitter. I need to root
around there for a while and see what I can do for the cause.
Jack, W8TEE
