
Ham radio is not dying, it's evolving - lightlyused
http://k0lwc.com/ham-radio-is-dying-no-its-not-its-evolving/
======
hibby
I saw this shared on Twitter this morning, and had some thoughts: While the
graph is good, it is specific to the US and ignores the fact that a large
amount of the amateur population is 50+ - the hobby is healthy now, but
there's an age crisis coming soon. It doesn't really reflect the health of the
entire hobby, globally, just a specific subset.

Millenials aren't young any more, I'm millenial and I've held a ham license
for over a decade - since my 20s. We're creeping in to middle age now, and are
somewhat past killing anything. We need Zoomers - Gen Z to be interested, and
the first step is probably not mislabeling them as millenials!

That said, there's a robust discussion to be had around this topic. I
absolutely love my hobby, the things it makes me do and the constant stream of
projects it gives me, but one day I do fear there won't be any folks on the
radio for me to talk to at the end of the projects.

I've got friends in the local hacklab interested, and I'm trying to set up a
/good/ station there to let us play, teach and share more with people who
aren't licensed... but it's really just a slow, expensive passion project!

~~~
mikece
> a large amount of the amateur population is 50+

Yes, and a lot of these folks take a "get off my lawn" approach to anything
that's different to how amateur radio has been done for the last 50 years. Try
talking up metro-wide mesh data network or using packet radio for anything
other than APRS you get the "Why would you want to do that?" Once upon a time
amateur radio operators MADE their own equipment: it was the maker space _par
excellence_ long before the term came into being.

There is so much that can be done with digital, SDR, and hybrid/fusion over-
the-air and internet modes. We could probably advance the hobby further and
faster by creating new amateur radio clubs specifically aimed at younger, more
technical makers and experimenters and _specifically excluding_ people who
think talking about the weather on a local repeater is the height of the
craft. Yes, its elitist, agist snobbery but if amateur radio isn't a home for
hackers and makers it's going to die within our lifetimes.

~~~
treeman79
I got involved with amateur radio ~20 years ago as a teenager Handled radio
traffic for various marathons. Was a bunch of 60-70+ people and a few
teenagers.

Got briefly involved a few years ago. Still dominated by 60-70+ year olds. Me
and a friend in our early 40s were the “kids”

~~~
jumelles
Yep, and in my experience the older people definitely lean towards the "law
and order" and "follow the rules" side of things, which is very disappointing
from a "hacker" sort of "question authority" ethos. You'd think the Venn
diagram between trendy maker spaces with 18–40 year olds and amateur radio
groups would be close to a circle, but there's hardly any overlap at all.

With the improvements and rising affordability of cellular networks,
satellites, wifi, IoT protocols, etc. — not to mention to overall transition
from analog to digital — will amateur radio even stay relevant?

------
rthomas6
I think a lot of young(er) people like me who would otherwise get into ham
radio are being sniped by SDR. You can buy a $30 piece of hardware and listen
to planes talking to the airport, see weather imaging from satellites,
intercept and read pager messages, listen to emergency and police radio,
listen to all channels of consumer grade walkie talkies, and also just
generally see the invisible world of wireless communications going on around
us. For a few hundred dollars, you can _transmit things back_. All on
frequencies that require no license with equipment that is very cheap compared
to ham radio.

~~~
Heliosmaster
Any recommended resources to get started with SDR?

~~~
flyinghamster
I have a couple of NESDR Smart dongles from NooElec [1], that have worked very
well for me. I run them on a Raspberry Pi 3 and pipe audio output to my
desktop or laptop with PulseAudio.

Aside from SDR# on Windows and gqrx on Linux, there's also GNU Radio [2] and a
variety of lightweight applications that can run on, let's say, a Raspberry Pi
Zero [3]. Oona Räisänen has a fascinating blog that touches on digital signal
processing as well, applicable to SDRs as well.

Me? No ham license, but that may come someday.

[1] [https://www.nooelec.com/store/](https://www.nooelec.com/store/)

[2] [https://www.gnuradio.org/](https://www.gnuradio.org/)

[3] [https://osmocom.org/projects/rtl-sdr/wiki/Rtl-
sdr](https://osmocom.org/projects/rtl-sdr/wiki/Rtl-sdr)

[4] [https://www.windytan.com/](https://www.windytan.com/)

------
wcfields
One factor that I bring up whenever the “ham radio is dying” discussion happen
is the FCC public database and safety/doxxing, specifically for marginalized
communities such as Trans individuals and Black folks. It, itself, is creating
a safety concern in modern society for people that may want to join the hobby
but fear doxxing and harassment.

If I give out my call sign on the Internet (or on the air) you now know my
real name, address, and every past address I’ve ever used. So let’s say I
registers as Bob Smith at 123 Fake St 4 years ago, and now I go by Susan Smith
at 456 Example Blvd you’d know all that information with a simple lookup.

The only real semi-workaround is when someone first licenses (and you probably
don’t know this at first) is to use a PO Box, otherwise any address change
will be on record.

~~~
geocrasher
With my last address change, I used a PO Box. My current physical address
isn't listed _in the FCC database_ (or qrz.com) and I use my PO Box everywhere
else. You can find past addresses easily but not my current. I like it that
way for the very reasons you've mentioned.

~~~
robertely
I'm studying for my test and they warn you that having an undeliverable
address could get your license revoked. I wasn't sure how seriously to take
that one.

~~~
geocrasher
Well considering how seriously they take the chatter that happens on some
bands (extreme profanity etc) I'd not worry about it. But, its better to be
above board completely. Safest route would be to have a PO Box at a forwarder
in another town.

~~~
jupp0r
There are services who scan/forward mail for you. It's not cheap but
convenient compared to a physical po box.

------
nickt
TAPR [1] is a ham radio club that has a focus on digital stuff, it’s
fantastically interesting geekery and should appeal to the HN crowd. The
monthly newsletter, the Packet Status Register [2] is a great read, with
projects typically involving radio, electronics, software and mechanicals. The
TAPR Digital Communications Conference (virtual this year) is in just a few
weeks [3].

It’s one of the few Amateur Radio clubs I know that has a Github repo [4]

[1] [https://tapr.org/about/](https://tapr.org/about/) [2]
[https://tapr.org/tapr-file-archive/](https://tapr.org/tapr-file-archive/) [3]
[https://tapr.org/2020-dcc-schedule/](https://tapr.org/2020-dcc-schedule/) [4]
[https://github.com/TAPR](https://github.com/TAPR)

------
jron
When I first read about FT8, I immediately started looking at the code to see
how simple it would be to handle more meaningful conversations. Fortunately I
stumbled onto this video from Jordan Sherer:
[https://youtu.be/mZKhVcFOljY](https://youtu.be/mZKhVcFOljY) He had done all
the work for me in JS8Call:
[https://bitbucket.org/widefido/js8call/](https://bitbucket.org/widefido/js8call/)

If you want to skip the video, the design document gives a nice overview of
the protocol:
[https://github.com/jsherer/ft8call](https://github.com/jsherer/ft8call)

~~~
jsherer
Glad you found me :) Here's the main site where you can learn more:
[http://js8call.com/](http://js8call.com/)

And a video walkthrough I did just a few months ago:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz0Cpkaol-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rz0Cpkaol-o)

~~~
ryanianian
Thanks for your work. JS8Call seems really cool, but I can never make any
contacts with it. Maybe bad luck, but every time I try on 20m through 80m
there's nobody on the other end. (FT8 and friends working fine.)

~~~
jsherer
Yea, Metcalfe's Law at work. Give 40m a try.

------
nipponese
A timely blog post for me: A close friend who is the same age as me (and an
EE) has been trying to get me into Ham for over 10 years. I finally became
interested and bought a $25 radio (BaoFeng UV-5R) on Amazon ... only to learn
that I couldn't talk to my friend on Day 0 because 1. he lives >20 mi away, 2.
no line of sight and had to learn about repeaters, and 3. I have to learn
technical and cultural nuance of Ham before being allowed to speak. The
proposition value that Ham is not an "old IM client" and instead a toy for
analog protocol nerds took a long time to understand.

Edit: added radio model, fixed price

~~~
jimhefferon
> 3\. I have to learn technical and cultural nuance of Ham before being
> allowed to speak

Could I ask what this item means? That you needed a license, or is it possible
that the repeater somehow enforced a class?

~~~
wycy
There's no technical enforcement of this. I think this is just referring to
the general conventions of the way people speak on ham radio, which is
different.

~~~
creeble
And varies widely.

Our club/repeaters don't have any obvious "cultural" norms or rules.
Announcing your call sign as required by FCC ham rules is about the only
obvious rule.

------
AndrewKemendo
Someone help me understand what is the exciting thing about HAM cause this
article doesn't do anything for that.

My first exposure to HAM was back in ~2000 when I started working at a car
stereo shop and the owner (NU5K) was huge into HAM. He was an asshole most of
the time, but very knowledgeable and loved to tinker with different HAM
components both benchtop and mobile.

Everytime I would try and get interested the end result promise was something
like: "You can bounce a wave off a cloud and talk with someone in Ukraine!"

Ok, well I can also do that on ukraine.bbs - and being able to choose my topic
instead of whomever is actually on this random band at this random time.

Even moreso now - there's a million things to tinker with on the hardware side
raspberrypi, Arduino, etc... even more on software etc. I see no reason that
anyone would mess with HAM.

~~~
bluesquared
>Ok, well I can also do that on ukraine.bbs - and being able to choose my
topic instead of whomever is actually on this random band at this random time.

I think this is one of the big advantages of amateur radio. No need for the
infrastructure of the internet...it's just you with some TX/RX equipment,
power, and someone else with the same. No ISPs, governments, servers,
software, etc... getting in the way.

~~~
msla
Ham radio is _all about_ governments getting in the way. You can't do anything
without asking a government's permission, and that permission gets revoked if
you try to hide what you're doing by encrypting something. Also, don't even
think about broadcasting without giving your license number, which is tied to
your real name and address in a public database.

------
rawoke083600
Im trying to get into HAM, My country South Africa, seems a bit disorganized
with respect to HAM. The few emails Ive sent to the local (national) ham
organisation has gone completely unanswered :/

I wished we had the USA's books and exam guides. It all looks like such a
smooth licensing process. In South Africa - there only seems to be two
licensing opportunities per year and I think I need to travel to another
province to take exam. I have an uncle that is quite deep into the hobbie and
he is also an E.E. He has this basement lab full of electronics and radio gear
that just makes me a software dev giddy with excitement :) Think dexter lab !

ps. Any hams in and around Cape Town that wants to give me a quick intro or
hands-on experience :) ??

Ps2. SideNote: Ive been trying to get into old school irc again. Had some good
friends and community back in the 90s there.

------
geocrasher
For as long as I can remember there have been people worried about the Old
White Guys Club aspect of ham radio. "ham radio is dying!" they say. Well, the
old guys keep pushing daisies and younger guys (not always young!) come along
and do things. It's how it goes. And not all of us are club affiliated ARRL
card carrying robots. I eschew all of that in favor of just having fun doing
my own thing, and one thing I've learned: There are a _lot_ of hams just like
me.

------
alibarber
COVID has been a shot in the arm for Ham in the UK in my opinion, the best
thing being remote exam invigilation. Now it's possible to study in your own
time and take the exam when it suits you - not just a couple of times a year,
or in a place miles away! Indeed, there's a lot to be said for meeting up as a
club - like anything really, but the logistics of the exam system seemed like
a vicious circle in the past: Not that many people are going to do it, so it's
not worth setting one up and booking a facility and all the paperwork that
often, so fewer people are going to be able to take it...

~~~
iuguy
I did exactly that, passed my foundation online at the start of this month.
I've been on my local 2m net a couple of times, but still setting up my rig.

I think the online side is good (and the free Essex Ham course is brilliant)
but once you pass there's nothing pointing you a what to do next. This is more
that people studying online aren't part of clubs. I'm still learning etiquette
and I think we'll end up with a lot of new passes ignoring it in 6 months time
as behaviours become ingrained.

~~~
alibarber
Good point - I am optimistic that people will naturally find other local hams
/ clubs and join or establish communities and meetups and things. But it'll be
interesting to see...

Must confess that I don't actually live in the UK any more so I am having to
hold out for the Full to become available online before I get back on the air
so I haven't been listening in or transmitting. For me though I'm really keen
to just build analogue circuits and QRP stuff, so I've been enjoying studying
this lately.

------
joeclark77
Learning about ham radio was one of my new "pandemic hobbies" and I got my
license in June. I don't think it's dying at all; in fact, to me it's much
more exclusive than Internet chatting or playing with Arduino. Both because of
the licensing requirement, and because you need to learn something about
electronics. That exclusivity is a draw! Similarly, learning CW (morse code)
has become _more_ popular since they dropped the requirement -- people like to
learn things that are a challenge!

I have kids aged 9 and younger, and their friends are starting to get cell
phones. I'm hoping I can get them to earn their technician licenses so I can
give them cheap radios instead; then they can have their own "social network"
without all the harmful stuff a smartphone gives access to.

------
stakkur
I'm a ham. I don't think there's hard data on the 'average age' of hams--it's
very anecdotal. Nobody really knows that, and the ARRL or feds don't have the
actual age of licensees documented.

I agree that ham radio is 'evolving', but I see that evolving as most often a
shift to computer-operated communication and digital tools. It's hard to
explain to folks outside of ham radio that this isn't a 'old technology' vs.
'new technology' problem, but more of a path of least resistance: computers
are ubiquitous, ham radio equipment is not.

More simply, fewer and fewer folks want to communicate with each other by
voice. This sounds trite, but I've found it to be true. Why bother, when
digital/text is so immediate and simple?

~~~
ProZsolt
I was part of my university's ham club. Getting people onboard by saying that
you could communicate with Australia is not niche any more in the internet
age.

------
nyanpasu64
I don't like how ham radio broadcasts are linked to your callsign under your
legal name (deadname) and identity. It creates the potential for trolls who
dislike like what you say to doxx you by sharing your legal identity and
mailing address (taken from websites linked to the government database of
licensees).

------
vidanay
Check out TARPN for an interesting usage of ham and more modern tinkering.

[http://tarpn.net/t/packet_radio_networking.html](http://tarpn.net/t/packet_radio_networking.html)

~~~
ka2dew
Off the grid text messaging attracts young people into the hobby and retains
existing hams, especially the young ones. This is a worthy concept.

------
TomMasz
The overwhelming majority of hams are male, white and old (like me). Just take
a look at most of the photos in QST or glance around a hamfest sometime. There
_is_ some synergy happening with the Maker crowd but it doesn't seem to me
that it will be enough to keep ham radio alive.

------
tyingq
I would guess that Digital Mobile Radio gets held back by the fact that most
of the internet is now SSL/TLS. And that you aren't supposed to (outside of
emergencies) pass encrypted traffic over Ham.

------
simonebrunozzi
I am always very suspicious of graphs that use a vertical scale that doesn't
start at 0. It makes you think the ham radio population has doubled or
tripled, while in reality it only gained a few percentage points.

~~~
mywittyname
You shouldn't be suspicious!

Not all data is best graphed starting at zero. Such as graphs with negative
and positive values or ones intended to show differences in values where the
magnitude of the changes are substantially less than that of the values.

------
kawfey
Reiterates a lot of the points from this post, "Millennials are Killing Ham
Radio" [[https://n0ssc.com/posts/583-millennials-are-killing-ham-
radi...](https://n0ssc.com/posts/583-millennials-are-killing-ham-radio)].

There is a movement/revolution in ham radio occurring, led by young people
online. Large youth-oriented groups like YOTA (in IARU region 1[0], 2[1] and
3[2]), YARC[3], YACHT[4], ILYH[5], and others. The advent of SDR and software-
based radio peripherals has really opened the ham radio door up into the
hackerspace, such that it's increasingly common to see radio-related articles
on Hackaday. Remote operation is also growing immensely and giving young
people a lot less barrier to entry into the real fun parts of HF operating.

I have high hopes for the future of ham radio, especially after emailing with
the new ARRL CEO [6]. He has a lot of plans and visions to fill the void where
youth advocacy and modern marketing led by ARRL have fallen short.

[0] [https://www.ham-yota.com/](https://www.ham-yota.com/)

[1] [https://youthontheair.org/](https://youthontheair.org/)

[2] [https://www.iarur3yota2020.com/](https://www.iarur3yota2020.com/)

[3] [https://yarc.world/](https://yarc.world/)

[4] [http://yacht.younghams.org/](http://yacht.younghams.org/)

[5] [https://ilyh.org/](https://ilyh.org/)

[6] [http://www.arrl.org/news/board-of-directors-elects-new-
arrl-...](http://www.arrl.org/news/board-of-directors-elects-new-arrl-ceo-
david-minster-na2aa)

------
marianov
Depends on the country I guess. In the US you can watch videos from Ham Radio
Crash Course and sit for a license online. The quiz is easy and you can then
move on to learn more advanced stuff. The only focus should be on not breaking
things (like interfering others or causing electrical havoc) In Argentina you
only can sit for an exam after 30 2.5 hour lessons, that is several months
listening to things you would better read/study out of a webpage.

And the attitude if you try to suggest a simpler process is "you are a
criminal wanting to circunvent the laws!" (this attitude also comes from guys
in the US if you suggest things like _asking_ if you could license on a
country and operate on a different one.

I'm better off using marine band, off road VHF frecuencies and GMRS as I
please.

------
halcasteel
I was really glad to find this thread, been doing electronics, do it yourself
since the 1959 when I was six and met my first HAM who shared enough to get
excited, my paper route got me enough cash to buy my first decent used
shortwave receiver. That and a wire I ran from my second story bedroom out to
the roof of the garage, and suddenly I was listening to people in different
countries and developing a serious interest in languages and putting pins in a
world map of everyone I had listened to in different parts of the world.
Eventually I learned some of those languages and went lived in some those
countries. HAM radio opened the world to me. I just got my General license in
June and with SDR radio and my computer started listening in on HAMs. I was
shocked at the language and topics and conversations. Way different than 60
years. Started shopping for a kit traceiver to build, hard to find one, not
like the old Heathkit days, when I built my first radio when I was 8 years
old. It made me sad, then I started realizing that the nerdy kids like me were
into 3d printing and Arduino and robots. However, they are going to miss out
on the IoT, which will be driven by radios. The young kids are going miss
learning the electronics and radio skills I got to learn before I was ten.
Those skills took me into computers, programming and physics eventually. I am
experimenting now with open source SDR and Lora mesh radio. Still alot to
learn. If we really want our country to these type of skill taught early
enough to open kids minds to what is possible and that they can design and
build it. In my life, it only took one HAM to open my mind. The rest is
history...

------
gorgoiler
Step 1: seed the knowledge part of your brain by learning of the existence of
an Elecraft’s KX2 and KX3 radios: [https://elecraft.com/products/kx2-ssb-cw-
data-80-10-m-transc...](https://elecraft.com/products/kx2-ssb-cw-
data-80-10-m-transceiver)

Step 2: sit back and relax as the rest of your brain goes into overdrive to
attain a license in order to justify purchasing one of these radios.

You never knew you wanted one until now! Time to start revising for the
license exam!

------
unnouinceput
Quote: "Tell us why RHR would be a good fit for you"

OMFG! Really? This corporate BS question, that I get tired of it every time I
find a interesting project to bid on, and the naive potential client has it
hidden in there - it's here for youngsters? I usually just go with a snarky
"because I'm awesome" or "because I'm the best you'll get" on my potential
clients. Hope youngsters are replying to them with "It's not, I'm a
masochist".

------
rmason
I wanted this essay to offer some hope and I was greatly disappointed. I've
been a ham for over fifty years and an ARRL member for even longer.

This guy compares learning Morse code to learning a foreign language! How does
learning the alphabet, numbers and a little punctuation compare to learning a
language?

When I started over half of us built our own rigs, now it's probably 5%. When
you were a kid few adults took you seriously or cared about your opinions. I
joined a club, met all sorts of people. I became an expert on certain arcane
parts of the hobby because they interested me. Suddenly when questions on this
area of expertise came up I was the expert people four times my age consulted
and this helped me gain self confidence. I also saw examples where not only
age but race or sex just did not matter because we were all part of the ham
radio fraternity.

I think we need to pitch ham radio as a worthwhile pursuit to those budding
nerds. Pick up technical knowledge that could lead to a career in engineering.
A social club where the work done to pursue membership had its rewards. A
chance to compare yourself to others in competition. Not everyone is a natural
born athlete but we all have a desire to compete in something and ham radio
contests are a way to do it.

~~~
MrRadar
> This guy compares learning Morse code to learning a foreign language! How
> does learning the alphabet, numbers and a little punctuation compare to
> learning a language?

I got my General license last year and this month I decided to give CW a try.
I do have to say that as an absolute beginner developing my listening skills
brings me back to when I was first learning Spanish in high school and how
much effort it took to figure out where words started and ended. Obviously
it's not quite as hard because you don't need to learn a large vocabulary, but
don't brush it off as trivial.

> When I started over half of us built our own rigs, now it's probably 5%.

I think this has much more to do with economics and the progress of technology
than it has to do with lack of interest. The Antique Wireless Museum recently
posted a series of videos on their YouTube channel on the history of amateur
radio and one of the things I learned was that before the 1950s commercially-
produced transmitters for the amateur radio bands largely weren't a thing, so
building them yourself was pretty much a requirement to get into the hobby.

Additionally, up to the 1960s commercial electronics were largely still made
entirely of discrete components hand-wired point-to-point which was a very
labor-intensive method of construction. If you bought the parts yourself or
you bought a kit you would be doing pretty much exactly the same thing they
would be doing in the factory but on your own time, giving you large savings
of money since you weren't paying for someone else's labor. Since then
electronics manufacturing has advanced greatly: PCBs, surface mount
components, pick-and-place machines, wave soldering, integrated circuits, etc.
Many electronics devices you buy today would be much, much harder to try to
build in a DIY environment than they would in a factory, even with a kit, and
the labor costs are so much less due to these innovations (and overseas
manufacturing) that you don't get the savings you once did.

I see the surge in interest in SDRs (which bring the infinite malleability of
software to radio at zero marginal cost once you have the SDR itself) as a
sign that this interest in DIY never went away, it's just the accessibility of
it that did.

------
Shoreleave
Regarding attracting a newer generation: appearances are important! The first
image on the page should not have people sitting on a toilet in what is
obviously a bathroom. It's kind of crazy someone thought that was a good idea.
Fear of being a loner who eats lunch in a school bathroom stall keeps kids
away from electronics and hobbies like these.

------
squarefoot
I love the new technologies allowing what once was considered impossible, like
long range bidirectional data links using milliwatts, however keep in mind
that most of those ready made modules use closed sources protocols, and it's
very hard if not impossible replicating their functionality using non
proprietary parts. Does it mean they're of inferior quality compared to open
source solutions? Absolutely not, but if the manufacturer decides to push
another technology, all your beloved swarm of data transceivers sending sensor
data back and forth becomes instantly obsolete.

Also, give youngsters some access to old tech as well. I don't have a ham
license, but by experience could possibly repair a damaged analog radio after
an accident, then send a distress SOS call by using a screwdriver to close two
contacts. It's forgotten practice, still there's one probability over a
billion times that it could turn out useful.

------
woofcat
As someone who has looked on into the hobby in Canada. I feel there needs to
be another class for people who just want to use a store bought radio.

I have to take time to study an exam about how increasing x changes y, and all
these other fun facts about radio equipment. However the draw for me is
talking to people, not building radio equipment.

Just my two cents.

~~~
alibarber
Interesting - in the UK we have a 'Foundation' license which is effectively
just that. Sadly I don't think you could take it and use it abroad (i.e.
outside the UK) though.

~~~
iuguy
You can't. I passed my foundation this month and am moving to the Republic of
Ireland later this year, so I won't be able to operate from there. Ireland has
a Class A/B licence a bit like the old City & Guilds exam, so there's a
massive gulf between foundation and a Class A licence.

There is some degree of sneakiness that may technically allow UK residents to
operate their UK rigs remotely via the Internet, but that's not a road I'd go
down.

As I'm going to be hopping back and forth a bit over the next couple of years,
I'll probably do the UK intermediate in about a year, then either do the Irish
class A or a British full licence after that depending on where I settle down
for good.

~~~
alibarber
Yeah I'm kinda in the same place (not literally, but I'm not a UK resident -
Finland now) so I leveled up to intermediate but I'm still waiting on Full
(which gives you HAREC, so a reciprocal full in most of the world) before I
start transmitting, do hope the RSGB set it up soon :)

------
aphrax
I remember trying to get into HAM a couple of years ago, I followed the
standard advice of joining a local group - after emailing to enquire I
received a reply which can only be described as rude, the exact opposite of
welcoming. Kind of left a sour taste, a shame really - I should give it
another go.

------
heyflyguy
I wonder how much of the new licenses have to do with FPV flying and long
range ISM radios for direct FMV feeds.

------
lxe
Getting interested in ham radio is difficult when you have a smartphone and
internet. "I can just talk to the world from my phone... what's the point of
this?"

What really got me hooked is the fact that modern information infrastructure
is so massive, expensive, and pervasive, and we just take it for granted.

Ham radio lets you replicate some functional aspects of modern communication
with literally nothing but $50 worth of parts and a long wire. No cell towers,
no fiber, no undersea cables, no comcast, no google, no facebook, no internet
servers/protocols/routers/hardware/etc...

It's amazing how much of this you can just collapse into a hobby project.

------
joshmlewis
Some of the growth is due to the rise of drone communications. In drone racing
you are supposed to have a HAM license to operate your video transmitter on
certain frequencies and powers. I'd bet a good chunk of the growth is from
that.

------
funkaster
Not necessarily HAM, but I just bought a pair of T800s[0] to use when I go
camping with my 4yo son and friends. I'm trying to get him to understand how
radios work so we have been having fun talking and learning how to use call
signals, etc. What I really liked about the T800 is the Bluetooth modem that
you can use to send extra data between radios (like chat and geo coords).

[0]: [https://shop.motorolasolutions.com/t800-two-way-
radios/produ...](https://shop.motorolasolutions.com/t800-two-way-
radios/product/B8F22204LBHAAW)

------
oneplane
I'm curious as to why you would bother with HAM. It used to give you something
that wasn't available otherwise, but that hasn't been the case for a very long
time.

There are plenty of ways to communicate with whoever you want, however you
want, whenever you want and completely encrypted too!

I see a lot of anecdotes of special distaster cases when HAM was the magical
solution, but I don't remember normal communications infrastructure not being
available for the last 30 years. Perhaps this is more of a thing in sparsely
populated countries?

~~~
jdietrich
Why do people buy vinyl records or ride horses?

There's something completely magical about making an inter-continental contact
with 5 watts and a wire in a tree, or bouncing your voice off an amateur-built
satellite with a handheld yagi. There's an eerie beauty to the atmospherics on
the HF band, the music of signal emerging from the noise. The anticipation of
the dah-dit-dah-dit dah-dah-dit-dah of a CQ call, the excitement when a rare
callsign weakly breaks through, the frenzied pile-up of operators jostling to
get their QSL. The bizarre geopolitical madness of 7055kHz.

Hardly anyone _needs_ to use amateur radio, but it can be a tremendous amount
of fun.

[http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/](http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/)

~~~
justusthane
Thanks for linking, this is a fantastic taste of SDR!

------
anon776
My offroad club has switched from CB to 2m. It really was not a challenge to
convince people once they saw/heard the difference between AM and FM and the
increased safety factor. Biggest hurdle was getting everyone licensed but the
practice tests online make it pretty simple now.

I think the future of HAM is finding practical uses for it that the average
joe can take advantage of. Hikers, campers etc can buy a $40 radio on amazon
now and have a great backup for when they are out of cell service.

~~~
hakfoo
I wonder if part of the problem is that if someone finds a sufficiently
compelling application, it will be adapted into a product that avoids the need
for a license.

I know that the CB band was originally intended to be licensed, but they gave
up on that once it became wildly popular in the 1970s, and it sounds like
those FRS products are basically designed to avoid the user having to acquire
a license.

In that sort of situation, the Ham community is basically an incubator of
communications products, 90% of which will remain niche or fail and 1% of
which will be tweaked slightly and sold to non-Hams.

------
helsinkiandrew
It would be interesting to see numbers for the actual active radio Hans rather
than license holders. I’ve a feeling (but no proof) that a ham license today
is more of a geeky/fun thing to get whilst learning about radio than it was 50
years ago and many with a license may have a UHF radio but don’t actively use
it as much.

------
gaze
Ham radio, the way boomers practice it, is very expensive and gatekeepey. I
don't have money for some fancy expensive SDR. Also, I'm sorry, but the ham
radio community these days is not actually that technically savvy. Most
largely know enough to get their license. There's a weird crossover between
the free energy community and preppers and ham radio. A lot just get their
license and get expensive rigs and compare them. If I wanna get at the good
engineers and have good technical chats, I just go to the extra-only bands but
that's even more gatekeepey.

~~~
gaze
Basically if I want technical questions answered, I'll post on EEVBlog. If I
want to talk about how these dern kids and political correctness blah blah
blah (I don't), I'll go on ham radio general/technician bands.

------
giancarlostoro
I have been meaning to get into the hobby but without some basic equipment I
havent even bothered to start. Also unsure about good resources to learn. I
have heard of SDR but I am unsure how those work properly. Given the current
state of things it might be worthwhile to pick it up sooner rather than later.

------
hinkley
You know that friend in college who turned out to be someone very different
than the person you knew at the time?

He may be out there with a family and community of his own, living it up, but
the person you liked is gone, and it’s not just okay but perfectly normal to
mourn that loss.

------
blnqr
I became a ham out of love and respect for my deceased father, who held a
General license, knew Morse code and had been a comms tech in the Air Force. I
keep the license in case of emergencies. But neither of those (good) reasons
are going to pull new people into Ham.

------
epx
Personally I don't like the usage of proprietary codecs on digital voice. It
was a letdown.

------
raziel2701
Not being confrontational, as someone that knows very little about ham radio,
what is the appeal? My impression was that crusty old guys were into it and
they'd speak all kinds of technical stuff and I was just not vibing with that
whole scene.

~~~
nucleardog
If you're into RF as a hobby or want to use RF gear in your projects, it's the
cheapest, easiest, and most straightforward path to getting access to a whole
bunch of radio spectrum and the ability to use a whole bunch of power.

With a basic license you can run a 250W transmitter. With an advanced license
you can run a 1kW transmitter. You have access to allocations pretty much
across the entire spectrum[1]:

    
    
      * LF: ~136kHz
      * MF: ~476kHz, 1.8-2MHz
      * HF: 3.5MHz-4.0MHz, 7.0-7.3MHz, 10.1-10.15MHz, 14.0-14.35MHz, 18.068-18.168MHz, 21-21.45MHz, 24.89-24.99MHz, 28.0-29.7MHz
      * VHF: 50-54MHz, 144-148MHz, 219-220MHz, 222-225MHz
      * UHF: 420-450MHz, 902-928MHz, 1240-1300MHz, 2300-2310MHz, 2390-2450MHz
      * SHF: 3.3-3.5GHz, 5.650-5.925GHz, 10.0-10.5GHz, 24.0-24.25GHz
      * EHF: 47.0-47.2GHz, 75.5-81.0GHz, 122.5-123.0GHz, 134-141GHz, 241-250GHz
    

An amateur radio license (depending on your locale, specific class may be
required) allows you to build and operate your own equipment without any
required pre-approval by the FCC or whatever your equivalent is. The license
is attached to you personally. You can buy, build, or cobble together any
equipment you'd like and operate it legally and take personal responsibility
for ensuring you're operating within your assigned bands/modes/etc.

It's basically an experimenter's license for radio.

You can use it to talk to some old guys, participate in emergency preparedness
stuff, work communications as a public service for events... but at it's core
it's really just a license to use a huge chunk of radio spectrum.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_alloca...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_frequency_allocations#ITU_Region_2)

------
geocrasher
I actually wrote an article on my blog that is making fun of the "Ham Radio Is
Dying!" or "[This Radio Thing] is going to save Ham Radio!" crowds:

[https://miscdotgeek.com/qrp-saving-ham-radio/](https://miscdotgeek.com/qrp-
saving-ham-radio/)

if anyone cares to read it.

------
jodrellblank
> " _Getting young kids involved in ham radio [..] We must get children
> interested in the hobby._ "

This has often had a bit of a creepy vibe to me. Not a sexually creepy vibe,
more like the Church targetting children to instill a set of beliefs about the
world before they develop critical thinking skill. More like "adults won't
want to do it our way, they'll try and introduce all these new digital modes;
we need to get to them while they're young to "instill the correct values""
creepy.

Apart from that it has a "treating women as objects" vibe to it; imagine The
Simpsons' Comicbook guy saying "we need more women in here", or Google saying
"we want more women employed here", Or Peter Thiel and his "I want young
people's blood"[1] ideas. Instead of wanting people with radio skills or
technical skills or organizational skills, instead of valuing people's
humanity and ability, only (non-sexually) fetishising one desirable attribute
- age or gender or skin colour or malleability (youth said a different way,
but this time meaning life inexperience) or excitability (youth said a
different way, but this time meaning pre-cynical age).

And apart from those ways, it's predatory in the sense of Facebook building
its software to focus on how to extract information from you, instead of
focusing on what you want. "We want more (youth/women/people of colour),
nevermind what _they_ want". You want more children interested, why should the
children give a damn? In the way that incels aren't entitled to a woman's
attention just because they want a girlfriend, amateur radio isn't entitled to
young people just because it's ageing out.

You want to expand amateur radio, no problem with that. Be interesting.
Welcome whoever is interested. You want to spend more time with kids? Get out
of the shed and volunteer at a school or play Fortnite, somewhere they are,
and support what they are interested in. Don't be the "parent" saying they
only have value to the extent that they mould themselves to the life shape you
want them to have, they already have personalities, they _are people_ not
club-number-filler.

(I'm neither young, nor a ham, but I've seen it as a sentiment over the years
in RadCom the magazine for the Radio Society of Great Britain, not just in
this blogpost, and other places which I won't try to name and shame, but this
isn't just a rant from one line in one blog post).

[1] allegedly.

------
RIMR
As long as radio waves can travel through the air, amateur radio will not die.
Why would it?

~~~
jodrellblank
In 1900-1940 you could talk to people far outside walking distance, miles
away, without needing to pay a phone bill or choose one person to ring up and
talk to, using some of the most advanced technology on the planet, to achieve
things you simply couldn't do any other way, and explore phenomena nobody had
looked at.

In 1940-~1990 you could talk to people _internationally_ , places you could
never go on holiday, watching valves give way to integrated circuits, lead
acid batteries turning to NiCad, improving signal sensitivity, reliability,
portability, take part in the hobby developing around the mass availability of
personal cars for things like assisting at sports events, or disaster
assistance and relaying emergency messages, competitions like radio contact
from hilltops, taking part in the developing space industry - satellites!

Now you can't build advanced radios from scratch in your shed, they're
massively complicated microcontrollers. There's no need to build your own
power supplies, cheap and efficient and reliable ones are abundant. There's no
need to build your own radios, for the same reason. And the internet exists;
chatrooms where you can talk to random people around the world are abundant,
internet broadcasts of airport control towers and such are available,
smartphones make portable contact nearly ubiquitous. Exploring new things is
fine, but when you can find hundreds of YouTube videos showing you that it
really is explored pretty thoroughly by now, that damps the allure.

------
riffic
get your license folks!

------
Igorvelky
My 5G mobile PHONE can provide me with 200MHZ of bandwidth and frequency range
from 400 MHz to 7 GHZ

So yes, HAM is DYING because outdated legislation is denying me same goodness
in my mobile 6Watt radio.

~~~
abruzzi
but an amateur license potentially gives you access to 1.8 mhz up to beyond
10ghz.

~~~
lightlyused
There are allocations below 1.8 MHz now.

