Based on my recent experiences with the Amateur VEC community and clubs, the hobby is destroying itself through an insular and clannish attitude towards applicants. Their parochialism towards other than their favorite modes is also off-putting. Listening to some on 40 meters in the early evening is akin to listening to a number of drunken sailors with their profanity laced rants and boorish behaviours.
As far as Rugged Radios, the FCC finally did something, but look at how long it took. Untold numbers of radios capable of interfering with public safety were sold to unqualified people and groups while the FCC dithered.
My initial experience (1990) with VEC's (CAVEC) and "clubs" was every bit the same as yours. These were older guys who were gloating about the amount of money they'd made off of testing fees, and how they ought to go out and treat themselves to a steak dinner afterwards - gloating so loudly that no one in the very echoic room could hear the cheap cassette player they were using for the code test. I got up, walked to the front of the room, snatched my money away from the one jerk doing all the boasting, and went elsewhere to take my test. We need to get rid of the testing fees, since VEC's can't seem to be VOLUNTEER (or decent) about it, and go back to FCC-only testing. Oh, and bring back code testing, too!!!!! The club (or was it a cult ??) I had joined in 1990 was so into political correctness that the only things one could dare talk about on their precious repeaters was "five over nine" (whatever the heck that really is), how well one was "making it into the repeater", and what kind of antenna one had just bought at the "boneyard". The
"slanguage" is really goofy, and the rest of the civilized world has no idea what we're talking about when we don't use plain English. But hey! We've got to SOUND important !
I've actually seen a ham get on a local police channel, bring up the phone patch, and make prank calls. Nobody wanted to do anything about it at the time. How this person could get away with such behavior, I'll never know.
One young licensee I'd met, who was 14 at the time, said to me after a year into being licensed (this was about 1997), that he and his family (all who had gotten licensed the same day) had taken a hard look at the situation, and decided to get rid of their ham stuff, turn in their licenses, and put their efforts and time into the internet after local hams had treated them like absolute crap on local repeaters. After all, they reasoned, they had phones - they can call whomever they wanted, talk about whatever they want to, and if they want to be politically incorrect THEY CAN !!! So the Amateur Service lost three JUST LIKE THAT! WAY TO GO HAM RADIO !
Let's not forget that "renegade" repeater out in California. If that doesn't make ham radio look bad, nothing does!
The SERVICE (not "hobby") is indeed destroying itself from within, and has been doing so for quite a long time. No less than 30 years by my count. But what do I know ?
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