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Not a ham (not against it, maybe one day), but my take is it's a sport-ification that's trying to appeal to the younger crowd. From the outside, at least to me

Not a ham (not against it, maybe one day), but my take is it's a sport-ification that's trying to appeal to the younger crowd. From the outside, at least to me ham sometimes seems like a bunch of old guys sitting out in their shack. And those old guys are dying out. Which is a problem if you believe cultural EM proficiency is important to a technology-oriented economy and communications-driven global military power projection... So "emergency comms from parks" appeals to preppers and outdoorsy folks (who skew younger), and maybe gives a reason for the young nerds to go outside. It ain't darts or cornhole or spikeball, but it's on that spectrum of sport if you look at it the right way. (None of this is meant to be anything against ham radio... there's been some great stories out of NC where it was the hams who kept comms running after Helene knocked out power and cell towers. And honestly, there's a certain ultimate-freedom beauty to a communication medium where you don't need to pay anyone a subscription, you're not using someone else's wires, and the only firewall is what the sun is doing to the ionosphere today. Just hard to compete for attention in the dopamine tsunami world of xbox and youtube and arduinos.)

jkingsman 2y ago
Yup, I'm not a big one for ragchewing (holding long, full conversations over radio) but I really enjoy the combination of tech and outdoors. The idea of scoring points for climbing hard mountains and getting tech up and running out there is a fun, objective-based way for me to do the wildly-cool-when-I-think-about-it activity of talking with people hundreds of miles through the air away without repeaters or general infrastructure.
nullc 2y ago
> And those old guys are dying out. No disagreement with the rest but that point is a bit of a shepard tone... you can find people making the "it's a bunch of old guys who are dying out" comment in amateur radio publications 50 years ago, confirmed by netcraft no doubt. There are more license holders than ever-- a decrease vs the total population, yes, but as a licensee the total number matters more than the share of the population. (If anything, the utility of the skill is increased by decreasing percentage of the population but improved by increasing total numbers: E.g. in an emergency there will be plenty of people to contact, but also more people who benefit from your assistance) It's true that tech like the internet has diminished some interest in radio, but OTOH computing technology and the overall decrease in real cost of sophisticated electronics has significantly supercharged radio. Hams tend to be older because of free time, disposable income, ownership of property where you can put up an antenna, and other such considerations... and because its one of relative few socially-interactive hobbies that you can still participate in even from a hospital bed. I wonder if online video games will eventually share a similar fate? Once your typical 80 year old is someone who grew up playing online games will online games be significantly overrun by old farts? :P
beaugunderson 2y ago
If you are looking to make contacts it also gives other amateurs a reason to make a contact with you vs. someone else; there are plenty of hunters who want to hunt every park they can. It also offers a predefined "out" to get out of ragchewing if that's not your thing. :)

jkingsman 2y ago

Yup, I'm not a big one for ragchewing (holding long, full conversations over radio) but I really enjoy the combination of tech and outdoors. The idea of scoring points for climbing hard mountains and getting tech up and running out there is a fun, objective-based way for me to do the wildly-cool-when-I-think-about-it activity of talking with people hundreds of miles through the air away without repeaters or general infrastructure.

nullc 2y ago

> And those old guys are dying out. No disagreement with the rest but that point is a bit of a shepard tone... you can find people making the "it's a bunch of old guys who are dying out" comment in amateur radio publications 50 years ago, confirmed by netcraft no doubt. There are more license holders than ever-- a decrease vs the total population, yes, but as a licensee the total number matters more than the share of the population. (If anything, the utility of the skill is increased by decreasing percentage of the population but improved by increasing total numbers: E.g. in an emergency there will be plenty of people to contact, but also more people who benefit from your assistance) It's true that tech like the internet has diminished some interest in radio, but OTOH computing technology and the overall decrease in real cost of sophisticated electronics has significantly supercharged radio. Hams tend to be older because of free time, disposable income, ownership of property where you can put up an antenna, and other such considerations... and because its one of relative few socially-interactive hobbies that you can still participate in even from a hospital bed. I wonder if online video games will eventually share a similar fate? Once your typical 80 year old is someone who grew up playing online games will online games be significantly overrun by old farts? :P

beaugunderson 2y ago

If you are looking to make contacts it also gives other amateurs a reason to make a contact with you vs. someone else; there are plenty of hunters who want to hunt every park they can. It also offers a predefined "out" to get out of ragchewing if that's not your thing. :)