Will this motivate you to get a General or Amateur Extra ham license?

[Dave Markowitz]

mtnbkr,

The FT-817 is neat but QRP only is too restrictive for me.  For me, the ham stuff is both a hobby and emergency preps.  If I need more than 5W to get a message out I'd sure like to have it available.

[mtnbkr]

There are a few 100w amps available that supposedly work great with it.  Besides, I'd like something that I can use at camp, even a backpacking only camp, and the 857 doesn't seem well suited to that.

Both have their strengths and weaknesses.  I need to determine how often I'll be using a radio in a given manner before I purchase anything. 

Chris

[mtnbkr]

KI4POT /AG

Chris

[Manedwolf]

I haven't used Morse since I was in the Boy Scouts decades ago.

Same here.  I'm not even sure I know any local ham people anymore.

I remember seeing some antennas among houses here and there when I was little, but they've all gone away as the owners died and the houses were resold.

And once there's satellite phones that don't require ground towers, what's the point? I know it was useful in post-disaster things when the celltowers go down, but now they're expecting direct satellite uplink within a few years.

The only thing I've seen of equipment was at some or the other swap meet I was at a few years ago, I won the ticket raffle for some massive ICOM something or the other. I put it on eBay and got more than its retail price. O_o

[mtnbkr]

At today's exam session, there were folks ranging in age from 9 to 90 (literally it seems).  There were at least 10 folks in their 20s to early 30s (myself included).  Some of those folks were getting their General or Extra, not exactly beginners...

Amateur radio is growing, evolving, and keeping up with technology.  I attended a discussion a few weeks ago dealing with Icom's new D-Star technology.  It is a VHF/UHF digital voice system.  What got my attention was that you can use the radios as wireless access points and create an up to 30 mile wireless network link.  Imagine accessing your home network and internet connection while on top of a mountain somewhere (I'm roughly 30 miles from the edge of the Blue Ridge).  You can also transmit data and voice at the same time.  An example of where this would be useful is at events such as our regional Marine Corp marathon.  Operators were transmitting medical information from station to station while discussing events via voice.    Standard wireless networking wouldn't work for this because there was rarely line of site contact between stations. 

As for basic communications go, Sat phones are still expensive and cellphones still require you to be in range of a tower (towers that are powered via the grid).  My VHF/UHF handheld can generally reach a repeater in areas where I can't get cellular service (while hunting for example).  If there's a region-wide power outage, I can at least operate simplex (person to person).  As the frequency goes down, the potential distance between nodes grows.  Let's not also forget about the ability to use amateur radio satellites, earth-moon-earth or meteor bounce, etc.

Ham radio isn't a replacement for regular cellphones, but they are more flexible and more likely to be useful in a disaster (think Katrina or 9/11).

Chris

[Manedwolf]

I think it might become more popular if they renamed the whole thing.

Call it like "digital longrange wireless" or something.

"Ham", unfortunately, is a terribly unglamorous and not-21st-century name.

[mtnbkr]

How 'bout we simply call it amateur radio like we've been doing.

Chris

[mtnbkr]

Nice edit.  Don't think I didn't catch the rude descriptions...

Chris

[Manedwolf]

Nice edit.  Don't think I didn't catch the rude descriptions...

Chris

Well, it IS an image thing. If someone sees a really old sort with the callsign cap and golfpants up to the armpits and all, and is told "that's for ham radio", I don't think that's going to exactly influence 20somethings to go "hey, I wanna get into that!" Honestly?

I just haven't seen any "looks like something for this century" marketing for the field, is what I mean.

I also just looked at the "association"...?'s website, and it needs a serious overhaul. Maybe some Flash, some actual, oh, I don't know, sound maybe?

I do marketing, so it just makes me shake my head when something seems to be declining from lack thereof. Gotta re-invent to stay alive.

I shake my head at gun stuff that misses the chance, too. When movies like "Enemy at the Gates" came out, antique military gun orgs had SUCH a chance to do something like take a movie poster and a bunch of Nagants to ranges, to get the black-rifle crowd interested, "here, try this from the movie!..." and get them hooked. They didn't.

Survival of hobbies is evolution, recruitment, and marketing.

For instance: Golf used to be Old Men. Golf is now Be Like Tiger Woods.

[mtnbkr]

I guess I was hallucinating those 20something hipsters I saw at the exam session this morning.  What did the cute music school student do when she found out she passed her General Class (2nd level of 3) exam?  She jumped on her cellphone and started gushing about how cool it was.  Neither she nor her boyfriend fit the stereotype.  In fact, only a very small percentage of the folks there today did.

The problem with "marketing" this "hobby" is that it's not entirely a hobby.  It's actually considered a "service" by the FCC and the folks involved are supposed to provide a service to the community in times of need.  There's no desire on anybody's part to have a large community of newbies who aren't interested in the service side or at least not the folks who'd turn radio into another "Intarweb".  This isn't golf, you screw up here and you could injure or kill yourself, or incur fines, or lose your license.  The FCC doesn't just regulate TV and broadcast radio...

While biking, I gave the satphone thing some thought.  Even if it can provide worldwide, non-terrestrial-infrastructure comms support 24/7, it's going to be awhile before it becomes universal to the point that it negates any need for amateur radio.  I imagine the phones are going to be expensive and hard to find.  There's always the cost of the service as well.

Also, there's more to amateur radio besides "radio".  A large portion of the test material and "hobby" itself is electronics, engineering, etc.  The FCC designed the service/hobby to encourage the creation of skilled and experienced engineers.  In fact, that's what draws me to it.  I could care less about random chit chat, but I love the opportunities to modify my equipment, build new devices, etc.  Back to the satphone example, your satphone's battery is dead, the powergrid is down, and there's no generator in sight.  What do you do?  Part of the knowledge base related to amateur radio includes alternative power systems and battery power (including various methods of charging those batteries).  One of the questions on my exam today concerned the use of solar panels to charge batteries.  Some of the others in the pool include wind power, and many aspects of power systems. 

Anyway, based on what I've seen since I got involved with Amateur Radio last summer, we don't need marketing types, we need dedicated folks.  No need for an iHam anytime soon...

Chris

[RocketMan]

Good analysis, mtnbkr.

73 de WB7VHR

[Boomhauer]

I need to get mine, but the only problem is that it is just about impossible to find out when the test will be administered in my area. I am in a small town, and the paper only reports the hamfests (and every other interesting event) the day after it happens- never before, so that I know it is happening. On the contrary, retarded events, like school talent shows, are reported every day for weeks.

I have a book on amature radio, but I need to get an up-to-date one. Unfortunatly, the one time I got to go to the hamfest was during the period I was getting my pilot's license, so I didn't exactly have the money to get started. I just went to see what one was like.

I would like to learn a lot more about radio, though. Might have to plan a weekend trip to somewhere for the exam and getting some equipment, maybe a big regional hamfest, if one exists...

I am glad that they are dropping the code requirment. It should be an addon requirment. I have no desire at all to operate in Morse code.

[mtnbkr]

To find exam opportunities: http://www.arrl.org/arrlvec/examsearch.phtml

Unless your book is very old, it should cover 90% of what you need to know.  Things haven't changed much in the past few years. 

For the Technician exam, this is an excellent study guide: http://www.geocities.com/w8bbs/2004techstudyguide.pdf

There are practice exams at www.eham.net and www.qrz.com. 

Chris

[yci]

AA9PW also has some good practice exams as well.

[mtnbkr]

Thanks YCI, I hadn't seen that one before.

At first glance, it looks like it even has morse code training.

Chris

[yci]

Thanks YCI, I hadn't seen that one before.

At first glance, it looks like it even has morse code training.

Chris

Not a problem.  That's the site we tend to send folks in our area to when they express an interest in joining the hobby.  Not sure about the eHam and QRZ tests, but AA9PW will give you a percentage breakdown of your results, allowing you to see which portions of the theory you need to work on more, helping you know where to start putting more effort into studying.

We've (the VE team I'm on) also found that once folks can score 90-95% on a consistent basis with the online exams, they should have no trouble passing the real thing.  This is not a scientific study by any means, just a general observation we've made over the past few years.

[mtnbkr]

That's funny, I was scoring in the mid 80s on the practice exams, but only missed 1 question on the real test. 

Chris