Ham radio is a hobby around what communication was like back in the day. There used to be no Internet, long-distance telephony was in its infancy, and radio (whether "ham" or official) was literally the only way to communicate in real-time at a distance, and those radios were relatively crude, required lots of knowledge and manual operation because digital logic wasn't advanced enough yet.
Nowadays that is no longer true. Except in very specialized applications, analog radio is not typically used for communication, and digital isn't using manually-operated radios either, it's stacks of dozens of layers that eventually end up transferring IP packets or similar.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but since ham radio no longer represents how the majority of people communicate today, maybe we shouldn't be holding onto the past and instead focus on how people communicate now? Maybe IP networks should be the future "ham radio", and we should have clubs around these things instead (and existing ham clubs should embrace them, instead of siloed things like digital modes over radio which are innovative but near-useless in real-world usage)?
Even in emergency situations (which is one of the arguments for ham radio), a satellite phone/modem will get you online pretty much anywhere in the world and the only barrier is the equipment, which doesn't seem too different from a ham radio where a good set costs decent money and can't easily be built from scratch and especially not in an emergency situation.
Imagine if ham radio involved into what I described above in which case being a ham could actually give you immediate, real-world benefits to you and your community in working around bad/nonexistent ISPs by building your own infrastructure? This would bring a lot more people into the hobby because those skills allow them to solve actual problems they/their community is facing.
It's a hobby. There's no need to throw away hobbies just because they're obsolete. Plenty of people enjoy blacksmithing and knitting even though nobody has a need to do these things themselves. We don't have to push people to do it if they don't want to, but at the same time if someone enjoys it, who cares?
It also does provide a societal benefit of having backup knowledge that might work when newer technologies fail.
We don't need to throw obsolete hobbies under the bus, but the people that are passionate about an obsolete hobby need to realize it is dying for a reason. You'll still get the odd-ball young person, but it is going to be increasingly rare.
Obsolete hobbies could potentially have a resurgence, from all kinds of subcultures whether paleo (paleo diets), hipster (vinyls and typewriters), geek (Ren Faires, historical reenactments), or even survivalist/prepper. Millennials are stereotypically known for seeking older, "authentic" things, with perhaps a level of exclusivity, so there can be ways to spin ham radio into something fitting their aesthetics of cool.
Radio hobbyists used to use spark-gap transmitters. These were cheap to make and popular. They also produced a lot of radio noise.
This caused them to be effectively banned by the 1930s, outside of marine use, in favor of continuous wave transmitters.
So that particular obsolete hobby will not have a resurgence.
I can see a similar argument with ham radio. If it "dies", that is, if there are many-fold fewer people using it, then that frees up RF spectrum. There will be pressure to reallocate those frequencies to, eg, commercial use.
When the 2090s subculture rediscovers ham radio, there won't be the spectrum for them all, and the spectrum assignments will be hard to change for what is likely a fad.
Maybe CB radio will be popular again? "Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the rubber duck. you gotta copy on me, pig pen, c'mon?"
That CW McCall line from Convoy brings back some serious memories.
Talk about old hobbies. When I was about 9 I found an 8-track of his and fell in love with that song. I spent much of that summer buying stereo equipment at garage sales to get a working 8-track player setup in my bedroom just so I could listen to that song on repeat.
"There's a road-block up on the cloverleaf and them Bears was wall to wall. I said Pig Pen this hear's a Rubber Duck, we justa ain'ta gonna pay no toll. So we crash the gate doing 98 I says let them truckers role 10-4."
I agree, there's nothing wrong with having a hobby and playing with whatever tools/equipment that you like.
However, the difference between let's say blacksmithing/knitting and ham radio is that the latter is a social hobby and relies on having enough hams out there so that there's actually some people to talk to on the air, and the problem they're facing right now is that the amount of those people seems to be on the decline.
This is not true. You can get started on VHF for below $100 (e.g. Baofeng handhelds) and the same is true for HF (e.g. a QRP-Labs QCX kit and a simple dipole antenna).
You can also find used 1980s HF radios (TS-440S era) in the range of $300 and add a power supply and some wire antennas so you'll have a fully capable 100W HF station for less than $500.
My personal experience is also that local radio amateurs will be very willing to borrow you equipment to get started. Many of the older radio amateurs have collected a lot of gear over the years and are happy to put it to good use.
Money shouldn't be an issue if you're really interested in ham radio!
So, the guy was 25 in 2017, he's a millennial himself. Let's see what has been truly killed...
BTX, dial-up, ISDN, pagers.
But ham radio? I don't think it's going to be dead anytime soon, because as long as the lower EM frequencies are not legally blocked by some other services, everyone can build and use their own tx/rx. And even then, nobody can stop the use of EM for communication, it takes some time to locate the source.
All those technologies died because they were replaced by something equivalent/better.
The only reason ham radio is not dead is because it has a hobby around it, just like ISDN wouldn't be "dead" either if there was a hobby around it and people were building/maintaining ISDN networks for fun.
In terms of practical use however, both ISDN and ham radio are near-useless to the majority of people, and the problem ham radio is facing is a lack of new people joining because ultimately, the benefits it offers (such as the ones you list) aren't problems the majority of people are facing (and the people that do are a minority that wouldn't be enough to sustain such a social hobby that also relies on real-world meetups to trade radio gear).
Nonsense. The difference between ham radio and most other telecommunication technologies is that all you need for ham is al allocation of spectrum and a couple of radios. ISDN and other legacy telco technology will disappear because they require a bunch of expensive, obsolete infrastructure - copper pairs to the exchange, the exchange gear itself, and the inter exchange trunks all cost real money in terms of support and maintenance.
Spectrum is shared and costs nothing to maintain. There is certainly an opportunity cost of assigning spectrum to ham versus some other use, but that’s very different to the cost of maintaining obsolete physical tech to support a few hobbyists.
Effectively being limited to your local repeater or maybe some local simplex (if you're lucky) gets very old, very fast. Not just because of the people, but there's just not much interesting to do. What I mean is that pushing a button on an off the shelf handheld doesn't require much sophistication. Same for handhelds as for car radios; and anyway car ownership is also less prevalent among young, urban people. Many people I know do carsharing. Can't install stuff there.
Most people want DX (long range) on HF bands, and that mostly requires moderately large antennas (for the non-hams: rule of thumb: ideally λ/2, where λ=100m-10m. smaller is a compromise). It's by far where most of the activity is, and if you can't participate in that, that may lead to a feeling of being left out.
(I say effectively because there are many niche areas that you can cover with handhelds and small antennas, like building a small cross yagi to reach a hamsat. But still, how often do you really do that? How much activity is there, really? Keep in mind for any mode, you need someone to talk to.)
So that leaves going outdoors and operating portable. Summits On The Air (SOTA) is so much fun. But with prep/driving/hiking/setup/teardown/driving/cleanup, that always takes most of a day. Not something you can do for an hour, after work. (And completely infeasible for kids too young to drive.) And you have to carry everything, which limits you to low power gear. Which leads me to...
...my 'best' experience: I was outdoors on some hillpeak, with a 15W portable radio. Had a nice diy antenna, but still couldn't reach most (with SSB anyway). Overheard two older hams running 1.5kW, talking straight over me, ranting that quote "young people just don't know how to listen". Toxic.
Home ownership rates in the US have been pretty stable going back at least to 1960, averaging about 65% with some long term swings down to 63% or up to 69%.
About 50% of Americans say they live in the suburbs, 30% cities, and 20% rural. If you just look at Millennials, it is close eto venly split between cities and suburbs at about 38% each.
Given those stats, I'm skeptical that housing is a factor unless someone can make a good argument that the young people who would have developed an interest in ham radio nowadays are moving to cities before that happens at a higher rate than previous generations did.
I would argue the jobs for the geek-adjacent people are in the big cities. Likelihood of being into ham radio correlated well with likelihood of being stem-y geek type, anf those jobs are in the cities where the housing situation is dire
It's good to keep some HF capability for emergencies. Beyond that, though, ham radio doesn't seem that important any more.
I restore Teletype machines from the 1930s and can't be bothered to hook them up to a radio. Much of the ham Teletype community actually uses something called ITTY, which sends frequency-shift-encoded radioteletype signals over an Internet audio bridge, so you can use antique electronics to decode the tones.
I'm not sure survivalist types will be happy with having to register with the Federal government to do something.
Plus, last I checked, I can look up ham callsigns online and find real names and addresses. (Just did: Popped callsign into Google, name and address came out, straight from the FCC.) If you're looking side-eyed at Facebook for invasions of privacy, I cannot imagine consenting to that level of utter public exposure.
You have to provide a address at which you can be reached by US Postal Service mail over matters related to your license. It doesn't have to be an address you can actually be physically found at.
Survivalist types do not necessarily concerns themselves with paperwork. There is no law against having the gear, I have plenty. And when the SHTF, the FCC is not going to bother people that had good intentions. Source: Have sat next to the FCC while operating out of spectrum. They really don't get involved unless you are interfering with someone. To really get their attention requires interfering with a government agency or a business or operating in a commercial spectrum. That is just my experience anyway.
I’m a millennial (35). I’ve been a ham since I was 15. It’s what led me to be an electrical engineer. I’m primarily a CW (Morse Code) operator, and have been since I started. I love the hobby, and it means a lot to me.
That said, I was basically always the youngest regular member of the local ham radio club, and most of the other members are/were old enough to be my parent or grandparent. That’s a little disheartening (which is not a knock, the people I’ve met and befriended are great, and have always been incredibly welcoming to me). I’m not sure how to change things, but I do think there should be less of a focus on chatting with old guys, and maybe more on the tech, the challenges, and the opportunity for learning.
FWIW, I sell a ham radio app, and have for 13+ years. My sales have increased ~4x during the pandemic. I guess a lot of people are returning to activity in the hobby while stuck at home?
you sound like a wise 35yo. Hanging around those old folk has some benefits.
I worked really hard with no one to help in a rural community to get my licence at 13, then after saving up and buying an old tube rig finding the disappointment of talking to old men about the weather.
I agree. I’ve always liked being around older people, because I feel like I can learn a lot from them. That was true even when I was a teenager. I had the incredible fortune to be friends with Pem Farnsworth, Philo T Farnworth’s widow in my teens. She was 76 years older than me, but a true friend, and an incredibly interesting person to talk to.
I feel like it is the same with many hobby clubs at least here in Finland. The average age of members is very high and going up all the time. Somehow younger people are not drawn to local clubs anymore, probably because many communities have moved online.
A decline in ham use is perhaps unavoidable due to what other comments mention but the government with its licensing crap and all consequences that go with it (see that comment about privacy) is a significant factor as well.
Leave some spectrum available, as unregulated as feasible, with some bar to entry.
Let nature, human nature, fill the gap. It will. In ways we can't predict.
There will be serendipity, genius, frustration, innovation, conflict, debate. These are all good things when you give a shared resource to passionate smart motivated (qualified) public.
What I found the biggest turn of in Ham, versus the communication medium I choose at the time, was the fact that everything was already close to perfect and people in the community knew close to everything and where very conservative.
"The internet" (datanet 1 in my case, growing up in Holland) was a complete different beast: everyone was scrambling to figure stuff out, there where no limits, no hierarchy, no unwritten rules, just an endless space to figure out and to share experiences and hypotheses.
Never lost interest in the airwaves since they are my first love, but never spend more then some after-hours on it. The ham people I've met over the years that I found to do interesting stuff, seem to border legal experiments (with a new found interest for pretty powerful (mobile) shortwave radios since recently).
Lack of time for hobbies is more likely the culprit.
Young people are attending post secondary schools in higher numbers. They are racking up debt faster than prior generations. Their summer jobs are no longer sufficient to pay for tuition. Housing is more expensive as are cars so they have to work longer. Child care is now as much as a full time job. Students are required to do unpaid volunteer work and unpaid internships.
I would dare say the system left behind by boomers is killing amateur radio.
Until this article, I thought that Gen X killed ham radio.
> Amateur radio is to The Baby Boomer and Generation X’s youth as IOT is to Millennials and Gen Y.
To clarify my bona fides, I'm solidly GenX. I didn't know any hams my age growing up. I was active with math-y and computer-y activities (MAΘ, programming competitions, science bowl, math camp) - many of the same places where IOT would be popular now, I presume - and ham radio never came up.
My dad and grandfather were hams and my dad was a professional radio engineer. They both helped in the ham response to Hurricane David in the Dominican Republic. (We lived in FL. My g'pa lived in the D.R. for a while, and was one of the first licensed hams there.) So I have an idea of what ham could do.
I didn't become a ham myself, even though I had hand-me-down equipment I could use.
I did listen to the hams, and wasn't interested in joining in.
It certainly wasn't enough to interest me in learning Morse - this was back when code was still a requirement.
I had a Heathkit H-151 PC-compatible computer, which I soldered myself. I would go to Heathkit computer meetings. Certainly the store sold ham gear, but again, never met anyone my age interested in it.
I dunno; methinks the ham arts have arrived at a new steady state. I am a boomer and have been a ham since 19 (the military avionics schools proctored the test for each graduating class). My Nephew is a gen 'Z' guy, and has an extra class (the boy can pass these tests half asleep).
A major difference is SDR. All of you code people can do DIY stuff by pounding on the keyboard, and hand-held radios have become dirt cheap. So nothing is dying - it is just re-inventing itself.
Author here. A lot has changed since then, mostly for the better. There's been numerous youth initiatives, clubs, groupos, and technological advancements that have grown ham radio since 2017 across all generations, especially millennials (that are starting to settle in and grow disposable income) and GenZ (that are starting to come of age to really experiment with various technical hobbies like ham radio, electronics, programming, etc)
This is a great sign, and there's more up my sleeve that I'm trying to get moving through larger organizations like the ARRL and IARU, so they can start to set the precedent for the future of amateur radio, rather than no-name bloggers like me.
Also, read the article. This was the first blog of mine that truly used a clickbait title, and as such the ratio of criticism regarding the content of the article to the headline is understandably low.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 92.1 ms ] threadNowadays that is no longer true. Except in very specialized applications, analog radio is not typically used for communication, and digital isn't using manually-operated radios either, it's stacks of dozens of layers that eventually end up transferring IP packets or similar.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but since ham radio no longer represents how the majority of people communicate today, maybe we shouldn't be holding onto the past and instead focus on how people communicate now? Maybe IP networks should be the future "ham radio", and we should have clubs around these things instead (and existing ham clubs should embrace them, instead of siloed things like digital modes over radio which are innovative but near-useless in real-world usage)?
Even in emergency situations (which is one of the arguments for ham radio), a satellite phone/modem will get you online pretty much anywhere in the world and the only barrier is the equipment, which doesn't seem too different from a ham radio where a good set costs decent money and can't easily be built from scratch and especially not in an emergency situation.
Imagine if ham radio involved into what I described above in which case being a ham could actually give you immediate, real-world benefits to you and your community in working around bad/nonexistent ISPs by building your own infrastructure? This would bring a lot more people into the hobby because those skills allow them to solve actual problems they/their community is facing.
It also does provide a societal benefit of having backup knowledge that might work when newer technologies fail.
This caused them to be effectively banned by the 1930s, outside of marine use, in favor of continuous wave transmitters.
So that particular obsolete hobby will not have a resurgence.
I can see a similar argument with ham radio. If it "dies", that is, if there are many-fold fewer people using it, then that frees up RF spectrum. There will be pressure to reallocate those frequencies to, eg, commercial use.
When the 2090s subculture rediscovers ham radio, there won't be the spectrum for them all, and the spectrum assignments will be hard to change for what is likely a fad.
Maybe CB radio will be popular again? "Ah, breaker one-nine, this here's the rubber duck. you gotta copy on me, pig pen, c'mon?"
Talk about old hobbies. When I was about 9 I found an 8-track of his and fell in love with that song. I spent much of that summer buying stereo equipment at garage sales to get a working 8-track player setup in my bedroom just so I could listen to that song on repeat.
"There's a road-block up on the cloverleaf and them Bears was wall to wall. I said Pig Pen this hear's a Rubber Duck, we justa ain'ta gonna pay no toll. So we crash the gate doing 98 I says let them truckers role 10-4."
However, the difference between let's say blacksmithing/knitting and ham radio is that the latter is a social hobby and relies on having enough hams out there so that there's actually some people to talk to on the air, and the problem they're facing right now is that the amount of those people seems to be on the decline.
Increasingly radio is how we are communicating, but it may not be obvious as the technology is hidden deep down.
As in all times, there will be curious individuals that wish to know how it all connects or wish to bend technology to their will.
Internet, as technology, is in no way in opposition to this fact. I would say that they are orthogonal.
I got myself a ham radio license but gave up after hearing the starter equipment was north of 1 grand.
You can also find used 1980s HF radios (TS-440S era) in the range of $300 and add a power supply and some wire antennas so you'll have a fully capable 100W HF station for less than $500.
My personal experience is also that local radio amateurs will be very willing to borrow you equipment to get started. Many of the older radio amateurs have collected a lot of gear over the years and are happy to put it to good use.
Money shouldn't be an issue if you're really interested in ham radio!
BTX, dial-up, ISDN, pagers.
But ham radio? I don't think it's going to be dead anytime soon, because as long as the lower EM frequencies are not legally blocked by some other services, everyone can build and use their own tx/rx. And even then, nobody can stop the use of EM for communication, it takes some time to locate the source.
The only reason ham radio is not dead is because it has a hobby around it, just like ISDN wouldn't be "dead" either if there was a hobby around it and people were building/maintaining ISDN networks for fun.
In terms of practical use however, both ISDN and ham radio are near-useless to the majority of people, and the problem ham radio is facing is a lack of new people joining because ultimately, the benefits it offers (such as the ones you list) aren't problems the majority of people are facing (and the people that do are a minority that wouldn't be enough to sustain such a social hobby that also relies on real-world meetups to trade radio gear).
Spectrum is shared and costs nothing to maintain. There is certainly an opportunity cost of assigning spectrum to ham versus some other use, but that’s very different to the cost of maintaining obsolete physical tech to support a few hobbyists.
Millennials aren't killing things, the housing crisis is.
Most people want DX (long range) on HF bands, and that mostly requires moderately large antennas (for the non-hams: rule of thumb: ideally λ/2, where λ=100m-10m. smaller is a compromise). It's by far where most of the activity is, and if you can't participate in that, that may lead to a feeling of being left out.
(I say effectively because there are many niche areas that you can cover with handhelds and small antennas, like building a small cross yagi to reach a hamsat. But still, how often do you really do that? How much activity is there, really? Keep in mind for any mode, you need someone to talk to.)
So that leaves going outdoors and operating portable. Summits On The Air (SOTA) is so much fun. But with prep/driving/hiking/setup/teardown/driving/cleanup, that always takes most of a day. Not something you can do for an hour, after work. (And completely infeasible for kids too young to drive.) And you have to carry everything, which limits you to low power gear. Which leads me to...
...my 'best' experience: I was outdoors on some hillpeak, with a 15W portable radio. Had a nice diy antenna, but still couldn't reach most (with SSB anyway). Overheard two older hams running 1.5kW, talking straight over me, ranting that quote "young people just don't know how to listen". Toxic.
About 50% of Americans say they live in the suburbs, 30% cities, and 20% rural. If you just look at Millennials, it is close eto venly split between cities and suburbs at about 38% each.
Given those stats, I'm skeptical that housing is a factor unless someone can make a good argument that the young people who would have developed an interest in ham radio nowadays are moving to cities before that happens at a higher rate than previous generations did.
Plus, last I checked, I can look up ham callsigns online and find real names and addresses. (Just did: Popped callsign into Google, name and address came out, straight from the FCC.) If you're looking side-eyed at Facebook for invasions of privacy, I cannot imagine consenting to that level of utter public exposure.
I used my PO box, for example.
That said, I was basically always the youngest regular member of the local ham radio club, and most of the other members are/were old enough to be my parent or grandparent. That’s a little disheartening (which is not a knock, the people I’ve met and befriended are great, and have always been incredibly welcoming to me). I’m not sure how to change things, but I do think there should be less of a focus on chatting with old guys, and maybe more on the tech, the challenges, and the opportunity for learning.
FWIW, I sell a ham radio app, and have for 13+ years. My sales have increased ~4x during the pandemic. I guess a lot of people are returning to activity in the hobby while stuck at home?
I worked really hard with no one to help in a rural community to get my licence at 13, then after saving up and buying an old tube rig finding the disappointment of talking to old men about the weather.
Then the Internet hit.
Any chance of a link to your app?
My app is: https://aetherlog.com. I’m working on a site redesign (finally!) now.
Leave some spectrum available, as unregulated as feasible, with some bar to entry.
Let nature, human nature, fill the gap. It will. In ways we can't predict.
There will be serendipity, genius, frustration, innovation, conflict, debate. These are all good things when you give a shared resource to passionate smart motivated (qualified) public.
Long live ham radio
"The internet" (datanet 1 in my case, growing up in Holland) was a complete different beast: everyone was scrambling to figure stuff out, there where no limits, no hierarchy, no unwritten rules, just an endless space to figure out and to share experiences and hypotheses.
Never lost interest in the airwaves since they are my first love, but never spend more then some after-hours on it. The ham people I've met over the years that I found to do interesting stuff, seem to border legal experiments (with a new found interest for pretty powerful (mobile) shortwave radios since recently).
Young people are attending post secondary schools in higher numbers. They are racking up debt faster than prior generations. Their summer jobs are no longer sufficient to pay for tuition. Housing is more expensive as are cars so they have to work longer. Child care is now as much as a full time job. Students are required to do unpaid volunteer work and unpaid internships.
I would dare say the system left behind by boomers is killing amateur radio.
> Amateur radio is to The Baby Boomer and Generation X’s youth as IOT is to Millennials and Gen Y.
To clarify my bona fides, I'm solidly GenX. I didn't know any hams my age growing up. I was active with math-y and computer-y activities (MAΘ, programming competitions, science bowl, math camp) - many of the same places where IOT would be popular now, I presume - and ham radio never came up.
My dad and grandfather were hams and my dad was a professional radio engineer. They both helped in the ham response to Hurricane David in the Dominican Republic. (We lived in FL. My g'pa lived in the D.R. for a while, and was one of the first licensed hams there.) So I have an idea of what ham could do.
I didn't become a ham myself, even though I had hand-me-down equipment I could use.
I did listen to the hams, and wasn't interested in joining in.
It certainly wasn't enough to interest me in learning Morse - this was back when code was still a requirement.
I had a Heathkit H-151 PC-compatible computer, which I soldered myself. I would go to Heathkit computer meetings. Certainly the store sold ham gear, but again, never met anyone my age interested in it.
Hence why I concluded that Gen X killed ham.
A major difference is SDR. All of you code people can do DIY stuff by pounding on the keyboard, and hand-held radios have become dirt cheap. So nothing is dying - it is just re-inventing itself.
This is a great sign, and there's more up my sleeve that I'm trying to get moving through larger organizations like the ARRL and IARU, so they can start to set the precedent for the future of amateur radio, rather than no-name bloggers like me.
Also, read the article. This was the first blog of mine that truly used a clickbait title, and as such the ratio of criticism regarding the content of the article to the headline is understandably low.