This ain’t yo daddy’s ham radio

One of my (pipe?) dreams with this whole ham radio thing is to get a local group of peers interested, and then maybe start a local club of one kind or another. The Williamsburg Amateur Radio Society, or WARS, seems like a sufficiently ironic name for such a group. Brooklyn Amateur Radio Society is another option, so, BARS — “Psshht! Yeallo, N2OMG this is W2WTF. See you guys at Union Pool? Over. Beep!” — Currently, though, the roll call would list one station: little old me. Thing is, my friends haven’t exactly been champing at the bit with interest — and I can’t entirely blame them.

As I see it, a major part of changing that — of generating interest in a variety of people — is popularizing knowledge of what ham radio is on paper: a free space allocated for experimentation and the interplay of common (and sometimes not so common) interests. All too often this is opposed to what the hobby is or looks like in practice. I mean to make no generalizations about hams themselves, but it’s really easy to get unsavory first impressions. A lot of the ragchewing you hear while browsing the ham bands (particularly on 2m/440, the most likely “first stops” for a new ham) is full of discussions between inconsiderate or unreflective, older, conservative, unhealthily patriotic men (yes guys, I love my country). There’s a fair amount of self-righteous idiocy, prejudice, and smuggery out there, and that’s liable to turn off a lot of people in my age bracket or background, who can just as easily revert to text messages, play with the stylesheet on their blog, start a band, build a digital recording studio, or spend their time on whatever else.

Again, I don’t mean to pass judgment on how people involve themselves in the radio hobby. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of political discussion of any flavor on the air, or anything else within the limits set forth by the FCC. That’s the point: It’s free (in the sense of freedom). My concern is, if younger people are going to get interested and stay interested in experimenting and communicating with radios — with any license, on any band, using any mode — they’re going to have to be able to find other people with similar interests inside and outside radio to experiment and communicate with. They will need to find people they can relate to and get along with in a variety of ways, who will collaborate and encourage not only their experimentation, but their development as people. That’s a big part of what sharing common interests does. It is fundamentally important that a hobby focused on the technology of communication offer a great variety of people and interests to communicate with and about.

I hate to be disparaging to my fellow hams, but despite all the different technologies available and the League’s “all walks of life” PR rhetoric, great variety and interpersonal skill doesn’t seem to be our strong suit. I’m not criticizing you — you keep right on doing what you like! — but none of the active PR campaigns that I have seen look very effective compared to what kids are used to these days, and filtering the longwinded ruminations of a klatch of curmudgeonly radio nerds out of repeater misuse and radio noise doesn’t, on its own, offer much compared to all that is available to my generation.

To this effect, I was rolling a new rhetoric over in my head. Something along the lines of THIS AIN’T YO DADDY’S HAM RADIO. A PR campaign of sorts, maybe, or the WARS motto — who knows? It was ultimately just a little joke I had with myself. But then two articles were published with comparable titles: Not Your Grandfather’s Amateur Radio, by David Sumner, K1ZZ, in the November 2006 issue of QST, and more impressively, This is not your grandfather’s HAM radio in the MAKE:blog.

Although I often appreciate Sumner’s column, I can’t say this offering gives us much more than the above-mentioned “all walks of life” rhetoric, with a focus on freedoms and opportunities that radio hobbyists can enjoy thanks to new technologies. Not that these aren’t good things to keep in mind, but excitedly telling non-hams (who, granted, wouldn’t be getting QST) that “microwave DX is no longer the exclusive province of hilltoppers” won’t find us marshalling queues to the VEC.

The MAKE article is a bit better in this regard, I think. Homebrew/DIY currently enjoys a deep and growing subcultural appreciation, even its own chic. MAKE is playing right into this, although not a whole lot when it comes to RF-specific circuitry or amateur homebrewing. If this chic is going to work to amateur radio’s benefit, it’s a matter of finding flexible spaces within the hobby that will accept and make welcome the newcomers. It means enabling communication between people who share more than just an interest in radios. It means recognizing radiocommunication as a means to wider discourse, as well as an enjoyable end in itself. These are not new ideas, not even among hams.

What else do we need? A better Internet presence, for one thing — especially if VoIP technology (stuff like EchoLink) is going to help out much; a few people familiar with (forgive me) Web 2.0 networking, presentation, and management; an eye for graphic design and editorial presentability; a degree of openness to the ways in which principles of radiocommunication are parallel to other kinds of communication and other interests in general; and most importantly, a few interesting, sociable people. I bet we have that already. Give me a few to hang out with, and I’ll show you the new face of ham radio.

—Brooklyn, October 2006