Some suggestions for promoting amateur radio

In the March 2005 issue of Contact!, an e-mail newsletter for those interested in promoting amateur radio, Robert Homuth, KB7AQD, offers the following suggestions:

• Leave ham radio magazines in your workplace breakroom.
• Carry an HT with you everywhere — to work, at the bus stop, to the park, and to the mall. Most people will misidentify your rig as a fancy cellphone, but a few will ask questions, then you can promote ham radio.
• Invite non-hams to a hamfest, reminding them that there’s other things to shop for, buy, and eat, other than ham radio.
• Get behind the key and microphone at a museum station, and volunteer!
• Donate a public safety scanner preprogrammed with local popular repeaters to a potential ham. My brother called me to tell me that his friends enjoyed tuning in to the local autopatch. He and his friends were impressed by the excellent audio quality of narrowband FM, and the heft and quality build of the HTs, compared to their tiny, screeching digital cellphones!
• As tempting as it is…do NOT denigrate CB, FRS, internet, cellphones and other popular telecom modes to promote ham radio as superior. You cannot shame a potential ham into getting a license! My brother worked his first DX on an FRS radio — twenty miles with a half-watt UHF micro-HT, and now he’s going for his ham ticket. On the other hand, I once made fun of CB, to prove that ham radio was “superior”, and the CB op I was talking to was not happy, since he enjoyed shooting skip and getting directions on his 11M rig.
• When promoting ham radio at a public gathering, dress like you are going to work, not changing oil in your lawnmower. The first time I saw a ham wear a “Ham Radio — Help All Mankind” t-shirt, it was on his torn and stained undershirt hand lettered with a laundry marker.
• Offer to go to meetings that your friends attend–Kiwanis, Boy Scouts, etc.–and talk about amateur radio.
• Offer to talk to engineering and electronics classes at local colleges. Tom, N7RPZ, took me to his engineering class at Glendale Community College. I did a brief talk on ham radio, and Tom followed up with “Now You’re Talking”. Of his sixteen students that semester, fourteen obtained their Technician class license, and the other two upgraded to General. Tom promoted ham radio as a way to turn the engineering and physics concepts they learned in class to real equipment the students could use in the real world.

I like all of these suggestions, especially the ones about dressing neatly and not denigrating other services. These two suggestions promote amateur radio by helping to improve our image.