I never watch any amateur radio videos or listen to any amateur radio podcasts all the way through. And this includes the episodes that I appear on! The exception that proves the rule, however, is the recently released episode 345 of Ham Radio Now,featuring noted maker, Jeri Elsworth, AI6TK, and her friend and co-worker, Amy Herndon, KM6FZE.
One of the reasons that got me to watch this video to the end is the obvious chemistry between Gary, KN4AQ, and his guests. That’s something that you don’t normally get on podcasts like this for some reason.
Another is Jeri and Amy’s takes on amateur radio. While Jeri is a celebrity in the maker world, and an electronic industry entrepreneur, she has only recently taken up amateur radio. Her QRZ.Com page notes that she has only been licensed since October 2016. I think that her combination of technical expertise, entrepreneurial chops, and recent license make her opinions on ham radio worth listening to.
For example, at about the 28:00 mark of the episode, Ellsworth and Herdon bemoan the complicated user interfaces of most amateur radio equipment. (Anyone ever try to manually program a memory channel on a Baofeng UV-5R?) She notes that this difficulty even threw her for a bit, and she’s a very sophisticated user of electronics equipment.
About the 34:15 mark, she says, “I think that there is a way to make amateur radio more ‘snackable.'” What she means by that is that the out-of-the-box experience should be more immediately gratifying. “It would be awesome if the radios did JT-65 right out of the box. You put in your password and your station showed up on QRZ or LOTW.”
I like this idea a lot. And, it’s something that we—and the ham radio manufacturers—should think about.
Gary, KN4AQ says
I think in the early 90s we crossed a line where it became impossible to just hand your handheld radio to a friend and have them operate it unless they were already familiar with that particular model. I hear that a lot of people get new licenses, and never use them. But I don’t think I’ve heard anyone make the connection that radios are too hard to operate. Maybe that’s just part of the idea that we don’t provide nearly enough one-on-one mentoring to get someone over the hump initially.
The era of software-defined radios that we are entering might allow building radios that have multiple stages of complexity. It will have to be something way beyond just hiding some menu items under the ‘expert’ sub menu. And then we’ll have to contend with the old farts saying that we are dumbing-down ham radio. But if someone like Jeri found her new Kenwood handheld too daunting, there’s a message there.
Tom KB5RF says
YES … great point. I got my license in February 2016. I think I spent a year trying to figure out how to make various VHF and UHF radios I bought to work. Then, I would forget and have to relearn again. I admit part of the fun is learning, but I’m blown away at how crazy weird and difficult the radios are to program – even the newer radios.
Dave New, N8SBE says
As far as JT65 goes, TenTec had the Patriot radio, which was originally CW only, IIRC, and some folks figures out how to hack it to do JT65. The radio was designed to be hacked, BTW. It strikes me as the minimalist means to get on digital.
Anyhow, I’ve started to look into JT65 and brethren, and even though it is generally dirt simple to download and install WSJT-X and start listening to digital modes with it, it is quite another thing to get a station up and running that can actually do two-way contacts with it. There are many setup menus which need to be dealt with, and the transmit audio levels need to be set, etc. etc. There is a comprehensive user manual, but the whole thing lacks a simple ‘get started’ guide that can get someone on the air quickly, if that is even possible. The recent article in the October 2017 QST by Joe Taylor, K1JT, and friends goes a long way to giving folks a general introduction to the many modes, and there is a part 2 promised in the November issue that goes into the bits and bytes of the actual protocols, which I’m looking forward to.
In the meantime, everybody has wholesale moved over to FT8, which is only supported by the Beta versions of the software, so anyone that downloads just the latest regular release won’t even find the FT8 mode supported.
So, someone that says they want to get on JT65 is already behind the 8-ball.
Dan KB6NU says
I think that’s the point Jeri Ellsworth was trying to make. A lot of this is well and good for the tech-savvy and the persistent, but perhaps the complexity of all this is discouraging to newcomers. I’m not sure what the solution is. We all like the fact that it’s free software, but free comes at the price of (sometimes) poor usability.