5 ms·

One of the issues around amateur radio operators is their age. I have a friend who, at 55, was the youngest member of his local ham radio club. It's just not a

One of the issues around amateur radio operators is their age. I have a friend who, at 55, was the youngest member of his local ham radio club. It's just not a hobby many people pick up any more.

vvanders 7y ago
Enrollment is up but it's not clear how many actually engage with local clubs. Age and gatekeeping is definitely an issue. It would be nice to see more focus on SDRs, GNURadio and things that connect more with a wider crowd.
- parvenu74 7y ago
  A lot of the gatekeeping and lack of interest in SDR, GNURadio, etc is from the older HAMs. Having local clubs with upper age limits of 45 or so might encourage more digital experimentation and openness to the kinds of innovation that used to go hand-in-hand with amateur radio clubs.
  - ajdlinux 7y ago
    A friend of mine who's in his mid-20s works at an infosec firm where he and quite a few of his colleagues have recently obtained ham licences. They went along and tried to engage the local club. They gave up and now refuse to deal with them. He suggested to me that either someone needs to start a digital-only club, or, as recently happened with our overarching national body, someone needs to intervene and take over the club to keep it relevant.
    - jcims 7y ago
      The old elmers have every right to run their club the way they want and use the bands too. Just start up a new club. Pretty easy these days.
      - parvenu74 7y ago
        HN Hams anyone? :-)
        jcims 7y ago
        I’m too lazy to run it but happy to hop on.
        DamnYuppie 7y ago
        Same.
        figers 7y ago
        Same
    - etimberg 7y ago
      I think it’s a case of finding the right club. I’m licensed in Canada along with my dad and it took us a while to find a good club where we live (Toronto). A good club, IMO, has a mix between old and new technologies and that’s been in line with my experience in the hobby so far
      - ajdlinux 7y ago
        "a good club where we live" implies the existence of more than one club...
  - Stratoscope 7y ago
    It's true, many of the clubs have not been doing a good job of marketing themselves to younger hams. Check out the photos at the top of the websites for a couple of our local clubs: https://www.paara.org/ https://www.paara.org/ https://www.fars.k6ya.org/ https://www.fars.k6ya.org/ Not too exciting to say the least. How about some photos of people doing interesting things with ham radio? And as you said, there are plenty of those interesting things. For example, here are some recent talks at PAARA: - 3D printing for ham radio (coming up this week) - Amateur radio communications during disasters - Using piezoelectric material as a radiating element for VLF communications - Making waves at UCSC: from ham radio to SlugSats (University of California Santa Cruz's CubeSat research on high frequency communications and particle physics) - From Faraday to Hertz: the birth of wireless - Designing off-grid solar power systems - Parachute Mobile (a local group that skydives with ham radio transceivers and makes contacts on the way down. Why? Because they can!) About the age thing: don't sell the oldsters short. One ham I know is probably in his 80's, and is setting up a system to track down malicious interference using Gforth for realtime analysis of SDR data, and now he's learning Python to build an application around this for volunteers to help track down the jammers.
  - madengr 7y ago
    I’m above the age limit for your club, and have done plenty with GNU Radio. https://github.com/madengr https://github.com/madengr
- wglb 7y ago
  See https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjt.html https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjt.html. The spread of activity of FT4 and FT8 is worldwide and extremely active.
- ampdepolymerase 7y ago
  Another issue is the obsession with regulating implementation, there really should not be any other terms to follow beyond power and general FCC interference guidelines. The stuff on encryption is obsolete and puts up unnecessary barriers in this day and age.
- neurobro 7y ago
  Plenty of young people are involved in "maker" and "hacker" activities using radio communications on the unlicensed bands. The cost of entry is on the order of $10 compared to $1000 for a half-decent HF station that's less versatile and less interesting. That's where amateur radio needs to provide value to stay relevant, not drawing youngsters into weird club meetings to hang out with a bunch of ancient totally-not-CBers.
  - yencabulator 7y ago
    I think a big challenge with that is the no-crypto-on-airwaves policy. It severely limits what you can control/observe over radio if everyone in the same area can do the same.
chrisseaton 7y ago
I don't understand what the hobby is now. What's the skill they're doing? Operating a radio? Is the skill voice procedure that's the skill? Or is it maintaining the physical radios? These days any radio I use is basically a full micro-computer, so you can't just jump in there and start soldering like a transistor setup from decades ago. I suppose setting up and siting some unusual antenna geometries is still a skill.
- falcolas 7y ago
  Well, you can still pull out a soldering iron and end up with a radio. That’s part of the draw, using home built equipment to talk to modern machines across the world.
- wglb 7y ago
  There are actually a large number of particular interests in ham radio overall. One interest is public service. The disasters in Montana couple years ago, in California fires, and in Australia are helped out by hams who can operate in environments without regular power. Hams supporting events such as the Chicago Marathon, which is so crowded that cellular networks are overloaded and not reliable in emergencies. Another interest group are folks who build their own radios. One very active group are those who build Elecraft radios, which end being up competitive with the most expensive radios out there. Another very active group are ham radio contesters, that draw hams from all over the world to compete, including events in morse code. An event that happens every four years is the World Radio Team Championship: https://wrtc.info/ https://wrtc.info/ . Again, hams from all over the world converge, the first year was seattle, another giant event was in Boston, another in Finland, and most recently Germany. A particularly exciting merger of ham radio and computers are the modern digital protocols, particularly FT8 and FT4 that are effective even in low power and compromised antenna situations. This has been created and supported by Joe Taylor, K1JT, a Nobel Laureate. A very serious technical challenge is communicating by bouncing signals off the moon called EME or moonbounce. This is at the edge of abilities, and only a few amateurs are successful at this. As far as age is concerned, many clubs today are taking up the challenge of getting young folks interested. Tim Duffy, K3LR, has sponsored an event with very young folks: https://dxnews.com/forum/forum/yota-ycp-scouts/13318-k3lr-wpx-ssb-2019-young-hams https://dxnews.com/forum/forum/yota-ycp-scouts/13318-k3lr-wp.... One very active ham is Violetta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or512r7vels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or512r7vels
agumonkey 7y ago
I may be naive but I'm pretty sure any young person would be amazed at assembling and tuning a crystal radio to communicate over the quantum void.
VLM 7y ago
Its relatively unchanging both by location and as a percentage of the population WRT "pick up any more" For more than half a century, the demographics have always been its a life long hobby most pick up in their middle age, and a steady fifth of a percent of the population are hams. Because of the baby boomers the number of hams in the USA is larger now than ever. Note that if contemporary "broadcasting" has taught anything, its even a very small fraction of the population can have a distinct healthy culture AND quite a bit of variety within that culture. So most hams are 60 yr old retiring EE-type men, but there are certainly all kinds of folks and its a very social hobby. What is "old" is the concept of local clubs for any hobby or activity. Young folks don't do "clubs" of any sort, so naturally all the hams in the local clubs are old. There are also correlated effects where VHF FM repeaters were affordable and high tech for a small (dozen size) club in maybe 1980, and with the decline in that form of operation the average age is quite high. In the 80s it was fairly normal for FM repeater club members to be pretty young as that was the high tech rebellious thing to do.
kawfey 7y ago
I got into ham radio when I was 15, before that I was fascinated with CB radio, FRS/GMRS, DXing distant AM/FM stations, and radio scanning. I also played a lot of video games and texted nonstop, built and fixed PCs for my friends, played in the school band, cherished my first car, had girlfriends and breakups, like a normal kid. I'm 28 now, and it's basically the reason for my career. So to "pay it forward," advocating for youth in ham radio has turned into my (very unpaid) side hustle. The current run of leading amateur radio organizations are aged, and more-or-less self serving the older demographic. I'm not sure if ham radio just was and always will be an old persons hobby, or if younger people can enjoy it too. Right now I help run a ham radio club for youth (https://yarc.world/ https://yarc.world/), with a 1300-member young hams discord server (https://discordapp.com/invite/E7GY7fR https://discordapp.com/invite/E7GY7fR), as well as a youth advocacy organization named Youth on the Air (https://youthontheair.org https://youthontheair.org) that will be running a summer camp for 30 young hams from North and South America at the Voice of America museum in Cincinnati, OH.

One of the issues around amateur radio operators is their age. I have a friend who, at 55, was the youngest member of his local ham radio club. It's just not a hobby many people pick up any more.

vvanders 7y ago

Enrollment is up but it's not clear how many actually engage with local clubs. Age and gatekeeping is definitely an issue. It would be nice to see more focus on SDRs, GNURadio and things that connect more with a wider crowd.

parvenu74 7y ago
A lot of the gatekeeping and lack of interest in SDR, GNURadio, etc is from the older HAMs. Having local clubs with upper age limits of 45 or so might encourage more digital experimentation and openness to the kinds of innovation that used to go hand-in-hand with amateur radio clubs.
- ajdlinux 7y ago
  A friend of mine who's in his mid-20s works at an infosec firm where he and quite a few of his colleagues have recently obtained ham licences. They went along and tried to engage the local club. They gave up and now refuse to deal with them. He suggested to me that either someone needs to start a digital-only club, or, as recently happened with our overarching national body, someone needs to intervene and take over the club to keep it relevant.
  - jcims 7y ago
    The old elmers have every right to run their club the way they want and use the bands too. Just start up a new club. Pretty easy these days.
    - parvenu74 7y ago
      HN Hams anyone? :-)
      - jcims 7y ago
        I’m too lazy to run it but happy to hop on.
        DamnYuppie 7y ago
        Same.
        figers 7y ago
        Same
  - etimberg 7y ago
    I think it’s a case of finding the right club. I’m licensed in Canada along with my dad and it took us a while to find a good club where we live (Toronto). A good club, IMO, has a mix between old and new technologies and that’s been in line with my experience in the hobby so far
    - ajdlinux 7y ago
      "a good club where we live" implies the existence of more than one club...
- Stratoscope 7y ago
  It's true, many of the clubs have not been doing a good job of marketing themselves to younger hams. Check out the photos at the top of the websites for a couple of our local clubs: https://www.paara.org/ https://www.paara.org/ https://www.fars.k6ya.org/ https://www.fars.k6ya.org/ Not too exciting to say the least. How about some photos of people doing interesting things with ham radio? And as you said, there are plenty of those interesting things. For example, here are some recent talks at PAARA: - 3D printing for ham radio (coming up this week) - Amateur radio communications during disasters - Using piezoelectric material as a radiating element for VLF communications - Making waves at UCSC: from ham radio to SlugSats (University of California Santa Cruz's CubeSat research on high frequency communications and particle physics) - From Faraday to Hertz: the birth of wireless - Designing off-grid solar power systems - Parachute Mobile (a local group that skydives with ham radio transceivers and makes contacts on the way down. Why? Because they can!) About the age thing: don't sell the oldsters short. One ham I know is probably in his 80's, and is setting up a system to track down malicious interference using Gforth for realtime analysis of SDR data, and now he's learning Python to build an application around this for volunteers to help track down the jammers.
- madengr 7y ago
  I’m above the age limit for your club, and have done plenty with GNU Radio. https://github.com/madengr https://github.com/madengr
wglb 7y ago
See https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjt.html https://physics.princeton.edu/pulsar/k1jt/wsjt.html. The spread of activity of FT4 and FT8 is worldwide and extremely active.
ampdepolymerase 7y ago
Another issue is the obsession with regulating implementation, there really should not be any other terms to follow beyond power and general FCC interference guidelines. The stuff on encryption is obsolete and puts up unnecessary barriers in this day and age.
neurobro 7y ago
Plenty of young people are involved in "maker" and "hacker" activities using radio communications on the unlicensed bands. The cost of entry is on the order of $10 compared to $1000 for a half-decent HF station that's less versatile and less interesting. That's where amateur radio needs to provide value to stay relevant, not drawing youngsters into weird club meetings to hang out with a bunch of ancient totally-not-CBers.
- yencabulator 7y ago
  I think a big challenge with that is the no-crypto-on-airwaves policy. It severely limits what you can control/observe over radio if everyone in the same area can do the same.

chrisseaton 7y ago

I don't understand what the hobby is now. What's the skill they're doing? Operating a radio? Is the skill voice procedure that's the skill? Or is it maintaining the physical radios? These days any radio I use is basically a full micro-computer, so you can't just jump in there and start soldering like a transistor setup from decades ago. I suppose setting up and siting some unusual antenna geometries is still a skill.

falcolas 7y ago
Well, you can still pull out a soldering iron and end up with a radio. That’s part of the draw, using home built equipment to talk to modern machines across the world.
wglb 7y ago
There are actually a large number of particular interests in ham radio overall. One interest is public service. The disasters in Montana couple years ago, in California fires, and in Australia are helped out by hams who can operate in environments without regular power. Hams supporting events such as the Chicago Marathon, which is so crowded that cellular networks are overloaded and not reliable in emergencies. Another interest group are folks who build their own radios. One very active group are those who build Elecraft radios, which end being up competitive with the most expensive radios out there. Another very active group are ham radio contesters, that draw hams from all over the world to compete, including events in morse code. An event that happens every four years is the World Radio Team Championship: https://wrtc.info/ https://wrtc.info/ . Again, hams from all over the world converge, the first year was seattle, another giant event was in Boston, another in Finland, and most recently Germany. A particularly exciting merger of ham radio and computers are the modern digital protocols, particularly FT8 and FT4 that are effective even in low power and compromised antenna situations. This has been created and supported by Joe Taylor, K1JT, a Nobel Laureate. A very serious technical challenge is communicating by bouncing signals off the moon called EME or moonbounce. This is at the edge of abilities, and only a few amateurs are successful at this. As far as age is concerned, many clubs today are taking up the challenge of getting young folks interested. Tim Duffy, K3LR, has sponsored an event with very young folks: https://dxnews.com/forum/forum/yota-ycp-scouts/13318-k3lr-wpx-ssb-2019-young-hams https://dxnews.com/forum/forum/yota-ycp-scouts/13318-k3lr-wp.... One very active ham is Violetta: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or512r7vels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=or512r7vels

agumonkey 7y ago

I may be naive but I'm pretty sure any young person would be amazed at assembling and tuning a crystal radio to communicate over the quantum void.

VLM 7y ago

Its relatively unchanging both by location and as a percentage of the population WRT "pick up any more" For more than half a century, the demographics have always been its a life long hobby most pick up in their middle age, and a steady fifth of a percent of the population are hams. Because of the baby boomers the number of hams in the USA is larger now than ever. Note that if contemporary "broadcasting" has taught anything, its even a very small fraction of the population can have a distinct healthy culture AND quite a bit of variety within that culture. So most hams are 60 yr old retiring EE-type men, but there are certainly all kinds of folks and its a very social hobby. What is "old" is the concept of local clubs for any hobby or activity. Young folks don't do "clubs" of any sort, so naturally all the hams in the local clubs are old. There are also correlated effects where VHF FM repeaters were affordable and high tech for a small (dozen size) club in maybe 1980, and with the decline in that form of operation the average age is quite high. In the 80s it was fairly normal for FM repeater club members to be pretty young as that was the high tech rebellious thing to do.

kawfey 7y ago

I got into ham radio when I was 15, before that I was fascinated with CB radio, FRS/GMRS, DXing distant AM/FM stations, and radio scanning. I also played a lot of video games and texted nonstop, built and fixed PCs for my friends, played in the school band, cherished my first car, had girlfriends and breakups, like a normal kid. I'm 28 now, and it's basically the reason for my career. So to "pay it forward," advocating for youth in ham radio has turned into my (very unpaid) side hustle. The current run of leading amateur radio organizations are aged, and more-or-less self serving the older demographic. I'm not sure if ham radio just was and always will be an old persons hobby, or if younger people can enjoy it too. Right now I help run a ham radio club for youth (https://yarc.world/ https://yarc.world/), with a 1300-member young hams discord server (https://discordapp.com/invite/E7GY7fR https://discordapp.com/invite/E7GY7fR), as well as a youth advocacy organization named Youth on the Air (https://youthontheair.org https://youthontheair.org) that will be running a summer camp for 30 young hams from North and South America at the Voice of America museum in Cincinnati, OH.