There are anti-automatic and negative-hams who would like to hold digital ham radio back in the same tired olde structure of "brass pounding nets" and "CQ random contacts" and bulletin boards of the 20th century.
But the facts of the matter are, that the old nets based upon manual monitoring and manual message-passing and even "logging in to check messages" are not up to the standards of modern communications. The only way for ham radio to stay relevant in today's world and in the future, is to keep moving forward with new methods of interfacing ham networks with the world's digital communication systems. For those hams who are still living in the past, possibly they would rather not open their eyes to see the reality of what our service has become these days... The number of active hams on HF is dwindling. Except for weekend (contests) or evening (80m ragchews in the major population areas), in many areas of the world you can tune through several megahertz of HF ham spectrum without copying many strong signals. The fact that HF ham bands are not crowded, is not completely due to the low solar cycle. It is partly the result of the HF active ham radio population dying off. We have not attracted new younger hams to HF because the older hams have literally pushed away the young hams with bad attitude and lack of vision and enthusiasm for the future of technological progress. As one example, for the critical years in the last decade of the 20th century, we showed our contempt for a new generation of hams by putting up the obstacle of morse code testing. But this isn't about the dead issue of morse code testing... what young person wants to be a part of a dying technology? We, as hams and radio experimenters and communicators and emergency volunteers should be wholeheartedly embracing all the new and wonderful ways that we can make more interesting connections with people and communication technology. There is more variety in digital communication systems these days than there ever has been in history. How can we continue to bring HF ham radio into the future of communication? I can tell you for sure that it won't be with the olde ham formula of calling CQ, random calling, or round-table nets. >From our mobile phone, we can instantly call a friend on their mobile phone in a distant part of the world, and it will ring... Can you do the same thing with your ham radio? If you are an HF Emcomm operator, can you make an emergency call, day or night, without prior notice or schedule, and get the message through? If the answer is yes, then what if 50 hams were trying to send an HF emcomm message at same time? Could you still get the message through? These are just foundation examples, the basic minimum that we need to be able to do as hams, in order to be relevant in today's world of communications. There is so much more that can be done. It's an exciting world, we can be a vibrant part of it, or we can long for the good ole days before cell phones when an HT on your belt was impressive. It's our choice. There are so many possibilities for new inventions and techniques to be developed in ham radio digital networking. It's our future. Bonnie VR2/KQ6XA "That's the news. If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own." --Scoop Nisker, Radio Newscaster
