On an amateur radio mailing list that I subscribe to, one fellow wrote:
I weep for the state of amateur radio in the US, since this dispatch is apparently necessary…
http://www.arrl.org/news/view/change-local-clocks-this-weekend-but-not-utc
This thread went on and on, eventually garnering 17 different replies. Before it morphed into a discussion of whether or not DST is a good idea in the first place, the replies echoed the sentiment in the original e-mail:
- “It’s become a push button, nanny state world, what do you expect, competence?”
- “We are truly in a time of appliance operating, not only in ham radio, but in practically every aspect of our lives. :-(“
At first, I had the same reaction. I thought to myself, “How dumb are we getting in ham radio, if guys have to be reminded that UTC doesn’t change when we switch to daylight savings time?” After thinking about this for a while, though, I’ve done a complete 180 on this.
I work with a lot of newcomers to amateur radio, and many of them just don’t know how UTC works. This is not their fault—they just haven’t had the opportunity to deal with UTC. The ARRL article is not directed at these old timers (old farts?), but at the newcomers to ham radio.
I’ll even go one step further. It’s easy for us old-timers to be dismissive of newcomers’ lack of knowledge, and then complain that amateur radio is getting dumber. If you’re an old time, don’t take the easy way out, though. Realize that there are many new people in ham radio, and the only way they’re going to get to be old timers like us is if we help them learn stuff like this.