> The lead article on the ARRL website today is one about a group of hikers > encouraged to get ham tickets so that they can run their own > communications. The club that sponsored it reports that after a one day > class, they all passed their Technician tests. > > When I think of how and why I got into this game, that story made me sort > of sad. > > Charlie, W4MEC in NC
I agree. While I think it is a good thing to introduce younger people to amateur radio (let me qualify "younger"; in this case we are talking about people who are still physically capable of even going on hikes), it seems to me that this story is a clear-cut example of using amateur radio as a personal communications service by people who otherwise have no interest in the nuts and bolts of radio. The League unabashedly caved in to that philosophy years ago when they took most of the technical articles out of QST and crammed them away in that other publication, QEX, that even full members have to pay extra for. Their justification, which I have heard repeatedly, is that technical articles are of "limited interest" to present-day QST readers. "...we were approached by members of the Rachel Carson Trails Conservancy a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania group. They were looking for radio amateurs to provide communications for the Rachel Carson Trail Challenge, a 34 mile long, 1 day, sunrise to sunset endurance hike... After a couple of years of working the hike we decided to ask the event coordinators if they might be interested in obtaining an Amateur Radio license. After some thought and discussion, they agreed. We had a 1 day class at our club, the Skyview Radio Society, and by the end of the day all the attendees had passed their Technician class tests... While we were doing the class, we knew that their main interest in getting the license was for the purpose of communications for their event." This reminds me of recent stories about police and fire departments requiring their officers and employees to get amateur radio licences so they can use the radios as part of their jobs. What does it say about to-day's licence exam, if people who are totally unfamiliar with, and have little interest in, the workings of radio, are able to pass the Technician exam after a one-day class? I can recall when one studied for weeks, if not months, to pass that test. At the very least, that says that the nature of the licence has changed so that the name of the licence class, "Technician" is now a misnomer and should be changed to "Communicator Class". If even one of those hikers develops a genuine interest in amateur radio, I would be the first to concede that the positive outcome made the effort worthwhile. But I also see the potential for this sort of thing being promoted, gaining in popularity and taking AR even further away from its fundamental basis and purpose, with the "communicators" and their type-accepted equipment eventually shoving the nuts-and-bolts hams out the door. Canada and UK are already headed in that direction, with a "Basic" entry-level licence class under which building, modifying or otherwise working on transmitting equipment is prohibited. Why do we still have the remaining vestiges of incentive licensing, particularly all that segmentation of the bands into restrictive subbands and sub-subbands, when incentive licensing was clearly a dismal failure in terms of its originally stated purpose, to enhance the knowledge and technical skills of the amateur radio community? If you are not already convinced, look at any issue of QST, 73 or CQ from the pre-incentive licensing days, and compare the content to what you see in an issue of QST or CQ to-day. Here is a link to the ARRL article. http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2009/04/29/10788/ Don k4kyv _______________________________________________________________ This message was typed using the DVORAK keyboard layout. http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/ http://gigliwood.com/abcd/ ______________________________________________________________ Our Main Website: http://www.amfone.net AMRadio mailing list Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/amradio@mailman.qth.net/ List Rules (must read!): http://w5ami.net/amradiofaq.html List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Post: AMRadio@mailman.qth.net To unsubscribe, send an email to amradio-requ...@mailman.qth.net with the word unsubscribe in the message body. This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
