Is Ham Radio Doomed?

[Lauri-CoyoteFrostbite]

Smiles

Name me a time on Earth when life wasn't dangerous.

I bet the English were living in the Age of Aquarius during the Blitz of London in 1940... My father regales me of the carefree times of the school air raid drills with 'duck and cover....." My grandmother to this day chortles about my grandfather, an Observer (aka Bombardier) aboard a B-36 with his finger on a 20 mega-tonne Hydrogen bomb. How about that Cuban Missile crisis ?......... All carefree days compared to now.

And this is just recent history... plagues of Black Death, a murderous tribe of fanatics raiding your village for human sacrifices **
The world has always been a dangerous place---

Hey, if that piece of Blue Ice falling 5000 feet from a leaking airliner's toilet holding tank (I'm in a plane right now-- that was an easy association for me)-- has your name on it- you;re toast - no nukes involved.

Go have a beer

Lauri

______________________________________________________



** recently re-watch'd the movie Apocalypto..... now that movie creep'd the stuffing out of me.

_______________________________________________________

Need something a little happier, more upbeat ? Threads

.
.

 

[KK2DOG]

The "Echolink aint real radio" crowd said we were doomed about ten years ago.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

I watched Apocalypto just long enough to see the village massacred. No thanks, I prefer Thunderdome!

I never saw Threads, but indeed it was "Duck and Cover" throughout my early life.

Now we have returned to the cold war shenanigans. It is worrisome. Forget the beer, I have some Meyers Dark rum. Clear ice, only. Shaken, not stirred.

 

[N4GIX]

I've never seen either of them myself. I'm not sure I'd even want to. I'm 70.6 years old and still have nightmares from "On the Beach" which I watched when it premiered in 1959. I was 10 years old at the time...

 

[TailGator911]

Apocalyptic prepper zombie movies are the thing right now, have been for some time. Hollywood trends have always been somewhat prophetic, to say the least. Empires always fall, and its usually self-implosion as a result of greed, government tyranny, and an economy based on a civil caste system, albeit the haves and the have nots, racial inequality, and corporate corruption, and a host of other social maladies. Look at the movies that are trending these days. We are all doomed. It's the end of the world, in technicolor.

But, if you'll notice, there is always an ancient ham radio somewhere on the set, and it is always working.

Ham radio will never die.

 

[mciupa]

As long as curious people want to experiment with radio equipment and take the time to learn, then Amateur Radio will be relevant and thrive.

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Apocalyptic prepper zombie movies are the thing right now, have been for some time. Hollywood trends have always been somewhat prophetic, to say the least. Empires always fall, and its usually self-implosion as a result of greed, government tyranny, and an economy based on a civil caste system, albeit the haves and the have nots, racial inequality, and corporate corruption, and a host of other social maladies. Look at the movies that are trending these days. We are all doomed. It's the end of the world, in technicolor.

But, if you'll notice, there is always an ancient ham radio somewhere on the set, and it is always working.

Ham radio will never die.

"The revolution will not be televised."

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

I've never seen either of them myself. I'm not sure I'd even want to. I'm 70.6 years old and still have nightmares from "On the Beach" which I watched when it premiered in 1959. I was 10 years old at the time...

Without spoiling it for the rest, there is some CW involved and it is thanks to the CocaCola bottling company and the prevailing winds.

 

[Token]

Ham radio bands are slowly becoming the new 11 meter band...

Only at the rate at which society is becoming the new 11 meter band.

T!

 

[Token]

Ask any young kid what ham radio is.
Not one clue.
It will die off sooner then later

Ham radio has always been a niche thing, with well under 2 in 100 people in the US being involved at any time in their lives. We have never had a higher number of licensees in the US than today, and it is still less than 3 tenths of one percent of the population. Even as a percentage of population, not just raw numbers, we have never really had more involvement with the hobby.

Kids don't, and never had, make up ham radio or significant involvement in the hobby.

Ham radio has always been an older mans game. Late middle aged, middle class, and older, have always made up the bulk of active ham radio operators (if not licensees), they tend to have the time and disposable income to become entrenched in the hobby. Among kids it was always been a very few that had electronics interest on their own and young people in Scouting, Cub Scouts, and Boy Scouts specifically (in addition to the Radio specific badge there were several other badges that pointed towards ham radio), so again, boys. Some High Schools did have ham radio clubs, but those mostly went away a long time ago as some of the first things cut when budgets got tight. My High School had such a radio club, and of a graduating class of just under 400, and total student enrollment of over 1700, there were less than 30 people, total, in the radio club.

Will ham radio die off? Of course, eventually it will be gone, nothing lasts forever. But I have been hearing, for decades now, how the death of ham radio is right around the corner. For more almost 50 years I have been hearing "there are no kids involved, so the old hands will die out and ham radio will be gone". I am pretty sure I first heard that said in the 1960's.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for getting youth involved. I have given away many radios over the years to promising young people to try and keep them interested in the hobby. But I personally don't see the current state of youth activity as a death bell. It is sometimes hard to get the youth involved in anything at all today. Today young people seem to find their ways to hobbies, of any type, later in life. Biking, horseback riding, shooting, painting, radio, whatever, it just seems to kick in later these days. I am more than a little worried about the Facebook generation, and if they will ever have interest outside reading facebook posts and drama, but that is a different story.

T!

 

[ladn]

recently re-watch'd the movie Apocalypto..... now that movie creep'd the stuffing out of me

Tis the stuff of nightmares, indeed. I'd rather watch Doctor Stranglove!
My favorite post apocalyptic book is Alas, Babylon (by Pat Frank). It was one of the few "assigned" readings in high school that I actually enjoyed. There's even some radio components, albeit not amateur radio. I'll still read it every few years and it never fails to produce interesting dreams.

 

[nanZor]

Token - you hit the nail on the head. Basically ham radio is only as "doomed" as the operator makes it.

In the early 70's for me as a young man, basically the same deal. It all depends on the operator and what we made of it. We did our own thing, but had OTHER hobbies we could incoporate or even just talk about off the topic of radio itself. Kept things interesting.

The funny thing was that there was plenty to blame on lack of participation. One of which was computers even back then:

Early to mid-70's: "Those dang DEC PDP computers are keeping those kids in the labs playing with um OOneex or something"

Mid to late 70's "All those kids programming in basic on those cheap Apple and TRS-80's. Back in my day, we had REAL computers and had to go to the comp-sci center to program. Zheesh, kids these days. "

Heh, it never changes. There's always an excuse for doom. Advice for young guys getting started - DONT GET DISCOURAGED by us oldsters. (That's me now.) Go forth and do your thing. YOU make the hobby what it is - make the most of it.

 

[Boombox]

There are still amateur astronomers looking at the sky with telescopes, both standard and electronically enhanced and controlled ones. That's when you can go on the internet and see awesome pictures of Saturn's rings close up and personal, rather than try to make out the oval you see in the eyepiece.

It will be the same with ham radio -- there will probably always be hobbyists who want to use HF, VHF, VLF etc. to contact and communicate.

The main difference between ham radio and other, similar hobbies like astronomy is that governments can't usually control the amount of sky you can see, but governments can control what swaths of radio spectrum can be used. I think that is the larger problem for ham radio's future. But the disappearance of the bands is probably a long ways off.

 

[W5lz]

...AAhhh, we're all doomed! It just ain't like it used to be!
If you beleive any part of that then I would suggest you revert to doing things the 'old way' for a while. I can say with reasonable confidence that if you even remember how it was done, you will definitely need practice to be able to do what-ever-it-was again, and then only sort of close. There will be whole baskets of, "Oh 'spit', I should'a done that before doing this!", floating around. You may not hear it, but it's gonna be there.
There are typically three things to change to doing something differently. 1 - It's easier for some reason. 2 - It's cheaper for some reason. And, #3 - (and probably the biggest reason) - Every body else is doing the new way, I don't wanna get left out!
So... Keep up. Or shut up. Or do it how ever you want to.