A lot of people invested considerable effort into obtaining knowledge.
Once obtained, they were free to coast. I take it there's no true continuing ed requirement to maintain a license?
Now, protocol / technical change threatens to render all their existing knowledge outdated. And furthermore, require additional effort.
Unsurprisingly, they're resistant. Said without malice, because that's just human nature.
Continuing ed requirements are usually a gimmick or BS, but in this case it seems like they might be healthy for the hobby. Demonstrating growth / trying new things? A nice process to gently nudge those not still actively learning back into the lower classes.
So unless there's a mechanism to blunt that (and select for lifelong learners), you end up with a tyranny of outdated architects, opposed to any and all changes.
Why would you gatekeep on something that is mostly a hobby and for volunteers. Putting a continuing ed requirement on that is just going to piss off people. People who build these networks are mostly volunteers and they put a lot of effort into this. I think there should be a bit of respect given for that.
Just to provide an example: I made a keyer in the 70s. The way to make a PCB was to get a 3x4 copper-coated board from Radio Shack, use a sharpie to draw your desired traces, then etch the board in an HCl bath. After that, you used an old-fashioned soldering iron to attach your components to the board. You became excellent at soldering ICs, to avoid the additional cost of using a plug-in socket.
(Now get off my lawn.)
What happens if the power goes out? What happens if you suddenly can't get those cheap PCBs, laptops, and phones from China? How are you going to communicate with someone a long distance away if you can't access a computer or an internet with all the bandwidth you could ever desire?
I think many people (younger hams included) have grown up now with the assumption that all of these things will just always be available. That's a risky approach, and doesn't make for a society that is resilient to external shocks.
Phone frequencies are a real cesspool most of the time.
Extra class licensee here. On phone (Single Sideband "SSB" or FM typically, for those not familiar with the terminology, where you use radio for voice rather than data/Morse) I've heard all kinds of absolutely reprehensible things. In one single conversation where a man was ranting about mask mandates, he managed to throw in derogatory use of the word "retarded," toxic masculinity insults, homophobia (including equating it to bestiality), racist innuendo, and even a call to arms to kill our governor if they wouldn't stop this mask mandate. Myself and others tried to temper the conversation and return to civility, but they wouldn't have it. It's one thing when people say these things in two-way conversations on HF, with lots of frequencies available to change to if you don't like what you hear. It's another when it's on the local FM repeater with a single frequency shared by thousands of people.
In order for amateur radio to thrive, it needs to be a welcoming and inclusive place to everyone. Young scouts - children! - of all genders, races, and backgrounds are learning ham radio and tuning into their local repeaters or working HF. I can't imagine what they or their parents thought if they happened to be listening in at that moment. Hams need to all be good to each other, and keep the negativity, insults, bigotry, and politics for your social media pages. Let's get back to talking about propagation, antennas, RFI in the shack, debating FT8, doing emergency prep, or even just discussing the weather.
CW and FT8 are generally best if you don’t want to deal with that sort. CW is much harder to put the effort in to be a dick and FT8 doesn’t have being a dick built into the protocol.
An automated system for recording and archiving these public transmissions with their call signs attached as tags would probably be a good first step.
People like that say the things they say for the attention it attracts to them. They are not ashamed of their dumbass bigoted opinions otherwise they wouldn't be transmitting halfway around the world in the clear. If you engage them in any way, even to try to shame them, you have already given them what they want. They are the trolls of amateur radio.
The right thing to do is what most of us hams do: spin the dial and find someone more pleasant to talk to.
https://www.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comments/iatqth/a_lot_...
social ostracization and penalty has its time and place, and this is one of those occasions. Same reason cars have number plates.
At the moment there isn't a financial incentive to perform this at any reasonable scale, but this doesn't mean that it can't be done at all.
Not discriminating here, just want to make it easier to correlate statements to the public record with public call signs.
Mention about the independent country of Taiwan or the autonomy of Hong Kong on radio.. well you've enabled the punishment of said behavior on a very real level. (In this case that would be invoking the national security letters recently introduced)
Is this really worth it for a few people with terrible opinions?
My stance: Let people have stupid opinions, let them blow off steam, recognize that you don't agree with them, don't be their opinions.
If it crosses the line where it wouldn't be allowed on over-the-air TV, it's not allowed on HAM radio spectrum. You can report it, and with evidence it can lead to nasty fines and/or revocation of license.
> Myself and others tried to temper the conversation and return to civility, but they wouldn't have it.
You're feeding into their behavior. IMO We're seeing a huge conflict in culture: one side that is authoritarian against unpleasant language and the other that doesn't accept that (or the suggested changed). (That's a very simplified view of it)
... which I don't find surprising and seems to fit, but what I was very surprised by was the tremendous amount of submission, and appeal, to authority that pervades HAM communities.
FCC regulations are not to be questioned. Even to discuss other, possible regulatory regimes or changes to rules is met with incredulity and sometimes outright hostility. God forbid one bring up issues of circumvention, etc.
I find it surprising because it is such a contract to the UNIX/FOSS community which places such a high cultural value on freedom and exploration of the gray areas of systems.
It's an odd cultural aspect of the HAM community ...
In the U.S., the entire HAM community exists at the FCC's pleasure and there are a lot of other interests out there who would be happy to take over their spectrum if the FCC woke up one day and decided it could be more productively used. Poking the FCC in the idea would be a pretty bad move for the community as a whole.
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”
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?
We were too young to object at the time, and now we're stuck with it.
And we spend all day on Slack at work so clearly the Amateur Radio version of Slack/IRC has to be called "Apathy"!
If ham radio goes digital then it’s just people wasting spectrum on something they could be doing on the Internet.
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.