This week, I’m headed to DEFCON, which is arguably the premiere hacking conference in the world. DEFCON hosts a a number of special interest groups they call “villages,” which organize their own sub-conferences on topics ranging from artificial intelligence to voting. One of those villages is the Ham Radio Village, and as I did last year, I’ll be teaching a one-day Tech class in the Ham Radio Village on Thursday, August 10.
So, what does this have to do with the ARRL? Well, one of the more popular amateur radio sub-hobbies is to complain about the ARRL. I won’t list them all here—my website account doesn’t have unlimited disk storage—but I think that most of you agree that there are more than a few complaints out there.
Well, part of the hacker ethos is to not just complain about things, but to do something about it. The Wikipedia entry on hacker culture puts it this way, “[hackers enjoy] the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming the limitations of software systems or electronic hardware (mostly digital electronics), to achieve novel and clever outcomes.” It seems to me that we could creatively overcome some of the limitations of the ARRL, i.e. hack the ARRL, if we put our minds to it.
I think that Parks on the Air (POTA) is a good example of this. The ARRL actually gave birth to POTA with their year-long National Parks on the Air program in 2016, which celebrated the 100th anniversary of the U.S. National Park System. It was a very popular activity, but the ARRL dropped it like a hot potato once the year was over.
Fortunately for us, a dedicated group of ham hackers stepped up and created the current POTA program. POTA is wildly popular and has been a real boon to amateur radio.
Get your hacking hats on
So, what else can be hacked? One thing that I can think of off the top of my head is Logbook of the World. At one time, there was talk about making it a more real-time system. I’m not sure whatever happened to that project, but my guess is that the programming was a lot more complicated than originally anticipated, and it got put on the back burner.
Another possible ARRL hack would be to do something about the ARRL’s digital magazines. This hack is particularly needed now that fewer and fewer members are going to be getting the print versions of QST, QEX, and the National Contest Journal. Making the information more easily accessible I think would end up being beneficial for the ARRL as well as ham radio in general.
Can you hack a hamfest?
This isn’t strictly an ARRL thing, but one aspect of ham radio that I would love to see hacked is hamfests. On Mastodon today, someone wrote:
Researching local hamfests, and they’re still such an old man thing. 7 am open gates. Grange fair. Fire house. Greasy breakfast cart. Noon close.
Can we get like a 3 pm start time at a farmer’s market with snacks, kombucha, and chiptune DJ?
My reply was, “There’s nothing that I know of that stopping anyone from starting something new.” It wouldn’t be easy to do, but life’s not easy, right? Hackers take on difficult challenges because they are difficult, don’t they? So, let’s get to it.
The Radio League of America was an early (1910s-1920s) competitor to the ARRL.
https://vielmetti.typepad.com/w8emv/radio-league-of-america/
They had some lovely art on their lapel pins!
This is the ultimate DIY hobby…sometimes people forget this.
I like the idea. Not that I have much time to put to it… but that’s also why I don’t like complaining too much about the ARRL. I do wish they would decide what they want to be and focus on that, whilst supporting other efforts – POTA is best run outside the ARRL, for example. But the ARRL can support it with legal advice, lobbying and promotion.
Where I have my biggest gripe is they are stuck in the 2000s when it comes to the web. Nothing is responsive, everything is meant to be viewed on the desktop (even their new website).
The digital magazines are awful. The mobile version sucks, and they’re essentially images of the print version. CQ’s digital distributor does a better job – the mobile app will present a text version of articles – far easier to read, and accessible to screen readers.
The same with books – I’d love some of their back catalogue, but they’re ridiculously expensive if you can find them. What about investigating Print On Demand for such books, and having an accessible digital edition available of all books? Or if they do not want that, donating it to the DLARC at the Internet Archive?
PLEASE don’t do a ‘responsive’ web version of the ARRL site. ‘responsive’ may mean that it looks good on your tiny smartphone screen, but it punishes everyone else with giant buttons and wasted acres of screen real estate. I’ve not seen a single ‘responsive’ web site implementation that looked efficient on large laptop screens. It’s bad enough that virtually every email client is web-based (if all you have is a web browser, everything looks like a web app), and so-called web-forums are slow and inefficient versions of Usenet. No wonder everyone needs more and more bandwidth to do nothing but display text messages.
And yes, the ARRL digital magazine apps (both web and tablet/phone) just plain suck. I’ve gotten tired of complaining to ARRL about them. The did change to a different provider once, and all it did was create a bunch of NEW problems.
Finally, if ARRL would remove the page or two of ads they stick in their print books, they could then send them via USPS media mail, and save everyone a ton of money. I find it really annoying to pay $19 for a book and then $10 for shipping. That’s just nuts.