One of the problems amateur radio faces is that people are all very busy these days, and when push comes to shove, amateur radio is one thing that often gets shoved. It’s just not a priority with people.
This is understandable. Amateur radio takes a lot of time. Setting up a station, building antennas, and then actually operating all take time. BUT, so do other activities. To get the maximum enjoyment and benefit out of any relatively complicated activity, you have to be willing to put in the time.
Assuming that it’s a “good thing” that those with amateur radio licenses become more active amateur radio operators, the question then becomes how do you get people to put in the time? I think it’s a matter of education.
We’ve made it very easy for people to get amateur radio licenses. While it’s debatable as to whether or not it’s too easy, I don’t think you can argue, that nearly anyone of average intelligence can get a Technician class license. Unfortunately, many do not progress beyond the Technician license.
Yes, you can do many cool things with a Technician class license, but because the test is so easy, many Techs just don’t have the tools to do those cool things. So what happens is that their experience of amateur radio is a lot more limited than those who do know more and can do more.
For some hams, this is OK. They enjoy the camaraderie of belonging to a club and talking to their friends on a repeater. For many, however, they quickly find ham radio–at least their experience of it–to be boring. They file their license away and stick the HT in a drawer. Some even become critical of ham radio. This is not a good situation.
This is a shame because those of us who are experienced amateur radio operators know how much fun it can be. If you’re like me, you want to share your experience with others and help them have fun with ham radio. The question is how can we do this?
One idea that I either came up with or stole from someone (I honestly forget which) is “Open Shack Night.” The basic idea is to invite people into your shack, show them your equipment, make a few contacts, and answer their questions. The goal might be to talk about a specific topic, such as operating CW or PSK-31, or about operating on the HF bands in general.
I hosted my second Open Shack last night. Four hams–all Techs–who are currently in my General Class license course came over. None of them, I don’t think, had ever been on HF before, so my goal was to try to show them how cool it can be, and since I’m a big CW guy, I was trying to show them how particularly cool CW could be.
When the first guy arrived, I was having a contact with OE5IMD on 30m. I explained what was happening, but his signal was not that strong, and we were operating pretty fast, so I’m not sure he got that much out of it. For my next QSO, I QSYed to 40m and found someone that would work me at 10-12 wpm. I think that worked better, as my guest could copy at least some of our QSO.
The other guests arrived, and I worked a couple more people on 40m CW. I’m not sure how much of an impact this had on my guests, though, because even at 10 wpm, we were operating too fast for them to make much sense out of it all.
In an attempt to keep them interested, I decided to try to scare up a phone contact. I found an empty frequency, but repeated CQs went unanswered. That was really frustrating.
Giving up on that, we just started talking. Being on the cusp of getting their General tickets, they were interested in knowing how they should decide what HF radio to buy. We discussed the pros and cons of buying used gear and then talked a bit about the different levels new gear available today. I think that proved to be interesting and useful for them.
All in all, my Open Shack was successful, but perhaps, not as successful as it could have been. I’m going to have to rethink how I demonstrate the coolness of HF. Perhaps I should concentrate on making a few phone contacts first and then making a few CW contacts.
I do think that doing this was a good thing. I’m going to do more of them, and I encourage others to do the same. I think new hams are starving for this kind of information, and no amount of reading magazines or talking on the repeater is going to provide it. They need up-close and personal demonstrations and hands-on activities to make ham radio more real.
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