No-see'ums

zogger

Sun Dec 30 21:09:42 -0800 2007

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Where do young folks even *see* a transceiver anymore beyond an FRS or CB? They are even getting thin on the shelves at Capacitor Hut. I just don't recall seeing anything of the sort at any *Mart or anyplace like that. And the stock answer is "we have cellphones now and the internet and wireless connections". I know all the arguments pro, and agree (mostly, some things about licensing and the FCC I just don't like) but to most people, even with the easier way to get a license, it is still a fairly arcane subject now. About the same to most people as the community civil defense shelters, they sort of know that they used to exist someplace. And I have no idea how to change that either. How many people even have short wave receivers now? It was common when I was a kid that if you had a radio it picked up durn most any broadcast, now you have am/fm and that is about it, with am fading fast with the younger folks, and a lot of fm being replaced with subscription satellite radio.

No-see'ums

Michael Smith

Sun Dec 30 22:35:52 -0800 2007

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Where do young folks even *see* a transceiver anymore beyond an FRS or CB?

Small UHF handsets are very cheap. Its not as hands on as tuning up your own antenna, but that just one of the things which don't seem to be as much fun as they were in the past.

Shortwave radios were good because you could get news from around the world. Now I get that from google. Amateur radio was good because you could talk to people from around the world. Now I use Technocrat.

I do think it is odd that radio operators don't need CW while pilots still do. I actually think morse is a good skill to have. I am glad I learnt it years ago when I went for my radio license.

No-see'ums

Bruce Perens

Mon Dec 31 02:38:54 -0800 2007

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Pilots actually have to use Morse to read the old LF beacons, but those beacons are slow. I remember living near one of the JFK approach beacons, it just sent "RT" all day. It was a lot harder to get to 13 WPM, I think I could once copy solidly at 13 but it took 60 days of twice-daily practice to get there after passing at 5 WPM. After those 60 days I passed the 20 WPM test just by copying the words after "IS", back when it was multiple-choice, but could still not copy solidly at 20.

No-see'ums

Michael Smith

Mon Dec 31 04:13:37 -0800 2007

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If I am ever stuck in a doomed Russian submarine I will be glad I passed my 5 wpm for the Australian novice license ;) Its a shame I didn't pass the regs test though. I could have had a call sign for my troubles. I learned a lot of electronics that year.

No-see'ums

kbielefe

Mon Dec 31 08:02:35 -0800 2007

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I'm not a pilot, but I used to write avionics software.  If I remember correctly, the dits and dahs are printed on the maps, so you don't necessarily have to understand what they mean, just be able to recognize the pattern, and unless you're hopelessly lost, you pretty much know which one you're looking for.

My aunt and uncle just got their ham licenses, but I think the code requirement was only keeping people from upgrading from technician, not from getting a license altogether.  Besides, I've seen comments on sites like slashdot that indicate most technical people didn't even know the morse code requirement had been repealed, unless they already had a license.  Heck, I know a few people with technician licenses that didn't know about the rule change.

I think the biggest barrier to more widespread licensing is a lack of advertising.  Manufacturers only advertise to people who already have their license.  Even TV channels that are frequented by retired people and/or technically oriented people, like the discovery channel or g4, never have ham radio advertisements.  Everything is word of mouth, and that can be slow.

We need a commercial that starts out in black and white, with a guy sending morse code through a boat anchor, and says, "Is this how you picture ham radio?"  Then switches to color and says, "Not anymore.  Morse code is no longer required to enjoy everything this hobby has to offer."  Then show a bunch of clips of modern usage on modern equipment, everything from an astronaut talking on one, to a young person talking on an HT, to digital modes, to emergency communications.

Anyway, I'm in the process of adopting a somewhat geeky 12-year old, so you might hear another youth on the air soon.

--KD7KME

No-see'ums

berck

Mon Dec 31 08:32:25 -0800 2007

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Hah!  I'm an airline pilot.  I don't know Morse, and I've never met another pilot who does, though I'm sure there are plenty.  Sure, the identifiers on beacons are in morse, but all our charts have the dots and dashes on them!  And you're right, the identifiers are transmitted pretty slowly.  Furthermore, on any modern airliner, the avionics are sufficiently advanced that the beacons are automatically identified by the avionics.  If the computer doesn't hear the right dots and dashes for the frequency tuned up, it tells you the navaid is unusable.

No-Code Came Too Late To Help Ham Radio

Nathan Smith

Sun Dec 30 22:41:08 -0800 2007

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I am one of those 2,000.  On May 3, 2007 I got my Technician license.  I did so party because of the influence of an old friend and partly because Bruce piqued my interest here on Technocrat.  I have a Yaesu FT-60 HT.  It's dual band, and that is good enough for working the local repeaters (Portland, OR).  I suppose soon I will start studying for my General and perhaps Extra.  I guess that means I also need to save up for an HF rig.

I have enjoyed my time in the hobby, though it was choked out for a time by graduate school.  I've worked quite a few international stations via IRLP, which has been fun.  I have also tuned in a few satellites, which was difficult yet rewarding.  I may build some antennas specifically for satellite work as a matter of fact.  My most fun moment was doing an FM contact from the top of a small mountain in central Oregon to a repeater in the Coast Range - about 117 miles.  Not bad for a 5-watt HT.

The frustrating thing for me is getting a sense of what to do next.  Local repeaters are mostly frequented by old-timers who are more concerned with carrying on their incidental, day-to-day conversations with each other than having a real conversation.  Even talk in IRLP is mostly concerned with weather reports (my wife has mocked me about that more than once).  So it seems HF is the next step, but I am in a condo, so there are not as many options for antennas.

I know many people were worried that Amateur radio would have to be rescued from the riff-raff, but it seems to me that it really needs to be rescued from the old-timers.  Anyhow, I am open to suggestions for fun with an HT.

KE7NCS

No-Code Came Too Late To Help Ham Radio

Uncle Entity

Sun Dec 30 23:37:12 -0800 2007

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General was easy.

You need to know a couple formulas and learn a few frequencies bands which <whisper> follow the same pattern for the answer except for one or two so you only have to memorize those.</whisper> Other than that it's a piece of cake.

But don't really use the general privileges, just have a handheld in case of emergency which I don't use either.

Maybe if I wasn't a nomad it would be different...

Elmers killed it for me.

computersareevil

Mon Dec 31 10:51:00 -0800 2007

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Old-timers, aka Elmers, are what killed it for me. I got a tech license in about 1990, and used it for fiddling with some VHF gear and talking to a couple friends. What was really aggravating was the local repeaters were often monopolized by Elmers talking endlessly about their latest colonoscopy or cataract surgery (this was in Florida). Constantly. Talking until the COR would time-out, then kerchunking to reset and and continuing on! I didn't want to talk about their biological problems, I wanted to talk about radios and frequencies and nerdy stuff!  I was also in college and extremely short on funds to buy even used radios to expand my operating environment. So I used my license very little, and it lapsed in 2000.

I will get another license in 2008, now that I can use the Drake TR-4 HF gear I bought a while back. So the no-code has inspired at least one person to get a license.

Former and possibly future KD4GKK...

No-Code Came Too Late To Help Ham Radio

AB3A

Mon Dec 31 06:59:49 -0800 2007

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I build a few things, and try them out on the air every now and then, and then mostly leave my gear alone.  I'm a builder, not an operator.

It is important to realize why people got in to the radio hobby in the first place. 

• Some wanted to meet other technically minded people.  The Internet has replace ham radio there. 
• Some wanted to communicate across town with their buddies.  The cell phone has replaced that. 
• Some wanted to talk to people in other countries.  Again, the Internet and relatively cheap long distance calls have replaced that.
• Some were interested in emergency preparedness (the significance of this is diminishing, but it is still important)
• And some wanted a place on the spectrum to play with radio

Only the latter actually continues to attract new recruits.  The radio construction, experimentation, and so forth has never been better for the hobby.  It's cheap to build stuff.  Quality parts are readily available.  There are lots of very interesting designs available online. 

Yes, the hobby is shrinking.  Most don't even know what a radio is any more.  The same can be said for shade tree mechanics, chemistry sets, and so forth.  I just finished reading a book The Radioactive Boy Scout about David Hahn.  His story is a tragedy on many levels.  He lacked the kind of mentor and resources to do this stuff right.  Instead, he went about his research like a loose cannon.

I fear that as ham radio receeds in to the background, we'll see many more David Hahn types invading the airwaves.  I wouldn't be surprised if much of it results from poorly constructed Software Defined Radio systems.  We need to keep the amateur radio service out in the limelight. 

An amateur radio spacecraft going to Mars would be just such an endeavor...

Ham Radio

turtledawn

Mon Dec 31 09:38:17 -0800 2007

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I think the problem might be more that no one currently uninvolved knows what the heck ham radio is for. I certainly don't, beyond relaying information during disasters. Chatting about random stuff with old farts on a box in the basement isn't all that appealing either (no offense to any old farts hanging around here ;-)  as I've got great-uncles for that sort of thing.

disasters and strife

zogger

Mon Dec 31 10:45:22 -0800 2007

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I keep some gear exactly for that purpose, but I don't have a license. It is emergency use only stuff, more for monitoring than for communicating. I give the wild wild west internet maybe two more years tops before it becomes a series of walled off gardens under very strict control. The governments want total control and censorship, the big corporations want you to pay a lot more and turn the net into something like a cross between your cellphone bill and cable TV. The way it is now just completely borks both those goals, so they will keep chipping away at it until they wrangle it back into what they see as the "proper" net. They will get there with tiered pricing, mumbling the words "terrorist and security" "think of the chidrenz" and so on. Oh ya, "hate speech". That's a biggee that a lot of folks are going to find out will bite them right in the butt because they are "for" regulating "hate speech". That's not the camel's nose, it is his whole head and neck under the tent right now.

open net catches more fish

rubycodez

Mon Dec 31 15:30:55 -0800 2007

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maybe the internet is more valuable to governments as something on which to eavesdrop and monitor, get dirt to use later as needed

I'm really glad I caught ham radio in it's prime..

the_rajah

Mon Dec 31 12:59:46 -0800 2007

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I've just celebrated my 50th year in ham radio. I passed my novice test in December of 1957 at age 11. My interest was sparked posthumously by my late father and grandfather, neither of whom I knew and neither of whom were hams.

My dad was an Army Air Corps radio operator during WWII and opened a radio repair shop in our little town when he got out of service. He died shortly thereafter, before my 1st birthday. He left behind an Hallicrafters S-38 radio. Tuning around with it and hearing stations from other countries certainly got my interest at somewhere around age 9 or so. My dad also left behind some boxes of miscellaneous radio parts, AAC manuals and a treasured pair of HS-33 headphones.

About the S38, I got one on eBay a couple of years ago. I recapped it as needed and aligned it. I had forgotten what a miserable radio it actually was. The image rejection is almost non-existant and it's not very stable above about 7 Megacycles and the dial calibration is a joke. Still I had some fun with it and eventually gave it to a teenage boy who expressed had expressed some interest.

My grandfather was a geek before geek meant what it does today. He was very handy with woodworking and electronics. He built little radios on wooden cheese boxes and fixed radios for neighbors and friends going back into the 1920s. Again he left behind boxes of old fascinating parts.

In the Summer of 1957, I discovered that our tiny library had a copy of the ARRL handbook..from 1944, but when I asked for it, it was checked out and overdue. The kindly librarian called the older boy who had it and he bicycled right down to the library to return it right then. He was in High School so I knew who he was, even though I was still in grade school, since everyone knew everyone else in a tiny Midwest town like the one I grew up in. I absorbed that handbook from one cover to the other. A lot of it was very "Greek" to me, but enough of it sunk in that I was hooked.

The librarian told me that her brother in the next town was a ham and would I like to meet him? Of course. He was disabled in the war and lived very modestly using all home built gear from salvaged radio and TV parts. He helped me study for the test and gave it to me a few months later.

I cannot ignore the help, encouragement and indulgence of my widowed mother who studied the code and license questions with me and who got her own novice license, although she did let it lapse when it expired.

The older boy who had the overdue ARRL handbook and I became good friends and now, some 50 years later are still good friends and he's still active on the air. Another slightly older boy also got his license at about the same time. We get together when we can and have a great time reliving some of the fun that we had together doing "ham stuff" like a field day when I got permission to tie one end of a long wire to the railing on a nearby grain elevator 160 feet up. We had a 250 foot long wire with an L-network and a 100 watt SSB/CW rig that could work anything we could hear on our Drake 2B receiver.

My first rig was a Heathkit DX-40 that I assembled while I waited for my license to come and the receiver was that S-38, eventually replaced with a used SX-99, a much better receiver.

As my high school years went by, I cajoled and salvaged and managed to eventually put together a pretty nice station for someone still in high school and without a regular job, I had a home brewed receiver made with parts from the Collins surplus store in Cedar Rapids, IA and a used Gonset GSB-100 100 watt SSB/CW/RTTY transmitter. I had salvaged tower sections after a tornado hit our town and bought a used TA-33jr beam that rode majestically over the house at 55 feet for several years. I was in absolute heaven.

When I went to college, I had various little rigs with me and used university club stations, but ham radio took a lower priority for the most part then. I also got into a little VHF with a Heathkit "Twoer" and later a borrowed Clegg.

During the Summer after my junior year of college, I got a call from an older ham friend who was a retired farmer who spent a lot of his time running phone patches for various far-flung military and scientific bases, especially Antarctica. He told me that the Hospital Ship Hope was going to be sailing to Tunisia in a few weeks and they had not been able to get a ham radio operator to go along to run phone patches for the ship's personnel and would I be interested? At first I thought about the fact that I was scheduled to return for my senior year of Engineering school, but then thought about the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that this represented. I did it and it turned out to be even more of an adventure than I expected. Being the ham radio operator on the hospital ship was an amazing experience. I learned a lot and saw a lot. The rig was superb, a Collins KWM-2 into a Henry 2K amplifier and a TA-33 up 125 feet above waterline. The guys in the states told me I was always the first station they could hear from when 15 meters opened up "across the pond".

When I had been in Tunis for some time, a sailing yacht came into port. It was owned by the retired managing editor of Life Magazine and his wife. They knew one of the doctors on board from New York and while they were visiting with him, they asked if there was anyone on the ship who could repair their autopilot. I was able to rig a repair from some of the spare parts on the Hope and they asked if I'd like to sail with them on over to Barbados where they were headed to spend the Winter. It wasn't a tough decision so I went and took a Galaxy GT-550 transceiver with me and a triband vertical so we were still in touch with home on a daily basis. I lived on their sailboat for a few months and crossed the Atlantic under sail in a 56 foot boat. Not your everyday adventure for a Midwest country boy. i never would have had the opportunity without ham radio.

When I got back from "Rajah's Excellent Adventure", I finished college, got married and ham radio wasn't a big priority, especially living in a small apartment. Then children started to appear on the scene, and yes, I finally figured out what was causing that, but not until there were 5 of them. About that time I figured out that mobile operation made a lot more sense than operating from home, so I got active on 2 meters and 440 MHz and had a lot of fun with that. Eventually, a couple of sunspot maximums ago, I bought a Uniden 10 meter rig and had a blast on 10 meters, eventually tuning down into the CW band segment and discovering that I could still copy code fairly well in my head so I added a fastened down straight key in the car and started working mobile CW while still being active on VHF/UHF.

When the sunspot cycle faded, I got a couple of those little MFJ 2 watt QRP rigs for 20 and 30 meters and went all CW on HF mobile. I tried various antenna configurations and settled on a Hustler with the short 22" base section. It worked very well to the point where I was accused of lying about my setup.

The years passed and the Internet came along. So did 10 grandkids. Since I still have a day job and also have an Internet business with a couple of partners, hosting some web sites as well as designing and maintaining some as well as operating one site that generates a steady ad revenue, operating time has shrunk and shrunk. Mobile operation has mostly gone by the wayside, too, as I'm not making the longer trips like I did in years past for my job. Yes, the mobile rig was in the company car with no holes drilled. My home rig is right behind me in my home office and the antenna is still up there, but it's been weeks since I turned it on, though.

Another part of not getting on the air so much is that I just don't feel the urgency. I'm not a contester or DXer and I don't have a bunch of friends to ragchew with like the old "Breakfast Club" on 75 meters in the morning. I run a TS-130SV Kenwood with a maximum of 20 watts on HF. My antenna is an inverted Vee 70 feet on a leg with the center 30 feet up. It's not hard at all to make contacts on CW with it, but I started feeling like it was just another line in the log book.

Maybe when/if I retire....

I'm really glad I caught ham radio in it's prime..

N0NB

Tue Jan 01 04:57:22 -0800 2008

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Great story, Rajah.

I wouldn't come on the scene until much later and got my Novice ticket nearly a quarter century ago at the ripe old age of twenty.  Amateur radio is still fun.  The key is to force oneself out of a routine.  That's not easy to do as routines are comfortable, but also uninteresting after a time.  I can tell when I'm stuck in a rut and then I need to look for a way to get out of it.  This year's SKN and my 25th anniversary of licensing are proving to be a good opportunity to brush up on my Morse proficiency.

Perhaps we as hams need to get out of a routine.  I think we need to re-evaluate how we approach recruitment.  Recruiting for quantity alone has not proven to be a productive long term strategy.  We've attempted various schemes for 20 years (since Novice Enhancement) and while each attempt has resulted in an increase in the overall numbers, are those people retaining their license, or, more importantly, their interest?  Many people are trying to figure this out by analyzing the licensing data.

Perhaps it's time for a new approach, one based in technology.  That is, technology that is approachable.  By that I mean identifying and recruiting those people who are "hands on" and would enjoy building radios and tinkering with things.  The QRP subculture has many of these people in its ranks and are an enthusiastic bunch (I dare anyone to get involved in a QRP group and remain bored).  Perhaps such an approach won't swell the amateur licensing database by double digit percentage increases annually, but it may result in active operators who renew their licenses several times over.

Local clubs are vital in the effort to recruit new operators.  For too long we've opted to rely on a top-down approach.  Now we just need to identify those people who would find amateur radio a rewarding hobby and get the word out to them.  The question is how best to do that.

Thanks, glad you enjoyed the story..

the_rajah

Tue Jan 01 11:24:48 -0800 2008

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QRP is my main interest the past few years. I mainly like to build gear, though, more than operating. I have a single 6AG7 breadboard crystal controlled 40 meter CW (of course) rig that I put together and I've got lots of parts that I've collected over the years.

I used to build a lot of my gear and especially enjoyed receivers. For several years I used a 23 tube receiver that somewhat followed the Collins 75A series with some adaptations. I was lucky that I could get to the Collins surplus store a time or two a year. I also built my own RTTY terminal unit, the famous Mainline TT/L AKA modem, again all tubes. Later on I did some digital stuff related to my RTTY activity when I build an ASCII to/from Baudot translator so I could use a TI Silent 700 ASCII terminal on the air. I built a KW amplifier using a grounded-grid 4-1000A. There's a picture of my setup from that era, 1965, here.

I've never been much of a club person. The idea of having to be at a meeting on a certain date at a certain time just didn't work well when I was married to my wacky first wife for those 27 years. I should probably start doing it now as my present lovely wife "gets" ham radio since her first two husbands (divorced from the first and widowed from the second) were hams and some of her friends back in NY from those years are, of course hams, too.

The thing about QRP, other than it mostly involves CW, is that it is approachable from a DIY hobbiest angle. You can easily build your own gear, either from a kit or from scratch.

I still consider it the king of hobbies, but it's got some very serious challenges ahead if it's to stay alive. Maybe one of my New Year's resolution should be to get active with the local club as well as on the air.

Follow up...

the_rajah

Wed Jan 02 13:14:16 -0800 2008

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The local club meeting is tomorrow night and only a few blocks from the home QTH. I'll be there. Got on 80 meters for a while last night. One problem that I'm fighting is noise level, it runs about S-6 or so on 80. I'm spoiled by my youth growing up out in the country with very little man-made noise. This city life has its drawbacks, even if it's a small city like mine.

Follow up...

N0NB

Wed Jan 02 14:05:32 -0800 2008

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Great!

I hope that proves to be a good time.

I too live in a small town and the noise is incredible on 160m.  On the other bands I do fine, but often as not the problem is from my own computer.  :(

Code test in VU (India)

vu2lid

Wed Jan 02 11:06:04 -0800 2008

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VU (India) Amateur Radio examination (ASOC) still includes a Morse Code test. There are plenty of youngsters in India still interested in Amateur Radio (even in locations where Internet connectivity is good). Most of the newly licensed Hams are relatively young (usually in their 20s).