A really bad idea

  I came across a post on KB6NU's (Dan) blog this week. I don't follow his blog regularly, but I was shocked to come across a highly-delusional post about someone else's licence restructuring proposal. 

This is not, I hasten to add, some FCC proposal. It's just two guys spit-balling, but it's a fairly frightening look at the 'logic' of hams and 'solutions' to the few problems that are actually admitted to exist. 

The problem that is attempted to be solved here is that "kids" aren't going in to the hobby. Now, in ham terms, "kids" can be anyone under 30, but Dan seems to be talking about actual children here. The solution, unsurprisingly, is to go backwards. Prior to 1978, the Novice licence was non-renewable; you were expected to move up to General Class within two years or abandon the hobby. Naturally, returning to this is proposed as the way to revitalise the hobby. 

This is pretty compacted delusion, broken logic, and failure to grasp a point, but read this statement by K1BG (that KB6NU endorses): 

We need to go back to what worked.  A simple Novice test, limited power (50 watts to avoid the RF exposure documentation), HF phone privileges, and a two year, non-renewable license. Move up or move out.  Given today’s technology, you could take the test with a general class or higher licensee, have him/her go online, and have a callsign (NA1AAA – NZ0ZZZ, designating that you are a Novice) the same day.  When you upgrade, your call does as well.  Done.  Get the kids in, get them hooked, and move on.

Where to begin? It seems that these two guys believe that a major problem is that it takes too long to get your callsign. With today's technology, it could be faster than it was before. Guess what?  We have today's technology today, and it's not a "same-day" process. How many people are there in the country, kids or not, willing to study for and stand for the exam, but not willing to wait a week or so to get their callsign? I've never heard anyone say, "I'd like to get a ham licence, but waiting that week...forget it!" You're probably going to wait a month or so for an exam session, anyway. 

It's the sentence "We need to go to back to what worked" that is profoundly delusional. Do these people fail to understand how different the world of 1978 was compared to today? Technology was limited, and there weren't too many options other than ham radio to explore. There was no internet. Kids couldn't decide to take up C++ coding and work on apps, for example. They couldn't get a Raspberry Pi board, write and compile an Arduino program, and test it out. There was no gaming industry, and they couldn't work on pixel rendering algorithms. Soldering together components, mostly from kits, was "high-tech" back then. 

But look at what communications were like back then. Cable TV was relatively new, for Christ's sake. Most countries had short-wave stations, and they broadcast in multiple languages. A lot of the world got their news that way. FM stereo had only been a reality for less than ten years at that point. Calling someone in Duluth on the telephone was an expensive long-distance call, and you counted the seconds you were on the line. No email, no BBS, no dial-up modems. When you were in your car, you couldn't be reached. And answering machines weren't even that common. People sent telegrams! Does anyone even remember what those are?

Being able to string up an aerial and talk to people on the other side of the country was an exciting prospect, much less being able to reach Europe. People didn't do that. Two-metre repeaters had only been in the metro for a few years, and a lot of VHF radios still worked on crystals. Compared to today, it was the Bronze Age. 

It doesn't take a lot of intelligence to see that amateur radio meant something different in 1978 than it does today. There were real, solid, practical reasons to go into the hobby -- and none of those reasons are valid any more. You were motivated to learn the code and study for the upgrade, because it was the only game in town. Guess what, Grandpa? Those days are gone. 

We already have a Technician licence that's renewable. What's happening with that? A whole lot of people find out pretty quickly that "it's not for them". Make it a "move up or move out" proposition, Mister Tough Guy, and you'll find that a whole lot of people choose "out". I know several people that have upgraded, and they don't spend hardly any time on HF. Gosh, maybe it's not the magical thing that it was forty years ago. 

A Tech today can run 200W on HF using CW. Few do, because CW is a dead language that only a minority of hams know. Yet, when Gateway to HF was announced, it was absolutely clear that new licensees would fall all over themselves to learn the code. Of course they would, because everybody wants to get on HF, right? Now, though, Grandpa has figured out that phone is the thing that all of the teeny-boppers are crazy about. Gee, if we're "going back to what worked", wasn't CW a big part of that? It seems that HF isn't all that of a compelling draw, if the current licensees can't be bothered to pick up CW in order to get in on that magic world of yesterday.

They're "getting in", they aren't "getting hooked", but they are "moving on". 

"Move up or move out". Really? When did the General Class become some kind of lofty realm of geniuses? It's okay if you stagnate there, because that's the pinnacle of human knowledge? This whole idea of pressuring people to advance is counter-productive. FM is fine for a lot of people, but you can't go too long without somebody's grandpa telling you that it's your job to advance, can you? If anything seems to "work" in the hobby right now, it's the Tech Class. Instead, you have miserable bastards harping on Techs to move up, for no good reason. Why? To be like you? Maybe consider what a stellar example you are before brow-beating others to emulate your glorious path. You probably haven't explored anything new in twenty years, HF or otherwise.

KB6NU weighs in:

I kind of like the idea of going back to some kind of Novice test that expires in a year or two. For one thing, it would eventually clear the database of all the Techs that got licenses and then never did anything with them. This would give us a much better indication of the health of amateur radio.

Yeah, be careful what you wish for, Dan. This is the dream of all the "old-timers": separate the serious hams from the dabblers. Amateur radio is serious business, as we all 'know'. Once all of the dabblers are run out of the hobby, it'll be just the serious people, and the hobby will thrive. It's not like you guys have been wrong before about this kind of thing, right? See, we've already got a whole lot of deadly serious people on HF, and people aren't crowding in to rub elbows with them. Maybe it's not 1978 any more. 
Just look at the decline in activity across the board -- even on HF. That's your "indication of the health of amateur radio" right there. People that can get on the air, aren't. Even Generals, Grandpa. Is it only me that notices the contradiction between being willing to toss thousands out of the hobby and the goal of bringing new people in?

But suppose we find out that "the health of amateur radio" is poor? What hare-brained scheme is next? Making it harder to get a licence, so that people will appreciate it more? That sounds stupid enough to be real. 

Realistically, we all know what would happen. There would a few delusional straws that would be grasped at for the first year or so, probably along the lines of, "people don't know about the new licence". 

For the next two years, we'd be told to "give it a chance!", and both kids that would join would have their faces plastered all over the ARRL website as 'proof' that the plan is working. By then, we'd see that "move out" is a real winner of an option, and there would be angry, bitter screeds all over that would amount to "Good riddance!". 

Then, the real idiocy would rear it's ugly head. Obviously, the problem would be that it's too easy to get a licence, so that being a ham "doesn't mean anything". Hey, if you want to hear the fascinating story of someone's hernia surgery, you're just going to have to learn CW at 15 wpm. Otherwise, you're gonna miss out. And, as the numbers take a nose-dive, the brilliant geniuses that created this mess would slip off into dementia. 

We've basically defined amateur radio as HF operation for decades, even though about half of all licensed hams really don't have real HF privileges. I know that it's heresy and all that, but maybe we could start to realise that HF really isn't that attractive to most people in today's technological environment.

Suppose, just for the sake of discussion, that: 

• 45-second QSOs with boring people isn't as compelling as you imagine it is. 
• Spending a nice weekend on your ass in front of a radio collecting "rare DX" is on the same level as collecting Pokemon trading cards or bottle caps.
• A whole lot of people in the real world can't put up towers, or don't have the real estate for long dipoles. Ever heard of an HOA? A lot of people in the real world have, buddy. 
• Boring people that are far away are about as interesting as boring people that are close at hand. 
• Many people have computers, tablets, and cellphones that allow them to "magically" communicate with the other side of the planet more reliably and more magically than 50W phone privileges will allow them to.
• If kids really want to talk to boring geezers, they can call their Grandpa on their cell phones.
• Kids have an entirely different and vibrant tech world available to them today, and working with steam-engine HF "tech" is the last thing that we need them working on.

 Let's also consider that the purpose of amateur radio licensing is to ensure that competent people are operating. The purpose of the licensing system is not to ensure that the world of 1978 is forever locked in to the regulatory scheme. Maybe if people needed a degree in physics to get a drivers licence, we'd have more interest in physics. And we could vastly increase the public's knowledge of Sanskrit if we required fluency in that language to legally operate a vehicle on the nation's roadways. But we don't, because that's not the kind of social engineering that licences are all about. If anything, now that "the ham guy" is out of the FCC, we can maybe stop letting the ARRL write the rules. That's been a spectacular failure. 

The best way to get young people in to the hobby is to get the elderly out, so be really careful about making this your major cause, Grandpa. Nothing says "this isn't for me" to a young person than finding out that 75% of the people on the air are retired. Maybe, in some dream you had, there are 17 year-olds that are so intent on hearing your tedious stories that they will take an exam and spend a lot of money to do so. But, they're in that same dream where new episodes of Mary Tyler Moore are still coming out.

Honestly, I can't even imagine what a kid would say to most of the geezers on HF. There's a cultural abyss there that has nothing to do with the licensing process. Fortunately, actual conversation isn't highly prized on HF. But the same kid that can IRC chat (an obsolete mode) with someone on another continent -- regardless if "the band is open" or not -- is not likely to be impressed by a scratchy SSB conversation on a noisy band. 

If anything, allowing entry -level hams digital mode operation at 10W would be more appealing than 50W phone. HF is noise, where FM is quiet, and digital modes are silent. Is everybody in the family going to want to hear the garbled SSB voices, the heterodyning of signals, the white noise, the inconsiderate operators barging in, etc? Long-time operators don't even hear that kind of thing, but those new to the hobby do -- and it's not "magical". 

I'd say drop the Gateway to HF and it's CW fantasy. Give Techs 10W digital mode access, instead of phone. Maybe even give 6M to the Generals -- they seem to be the only ones that see value in it. And don't give Techs access to anything higher than 900 MHz, because they'll fry their eyeballs. I've given Gateway to HF a fair chance, and it sucks rocks. There's a de-facto 15 wpm "proficiency test" built in, because nobody will QRS. I guess we already have a "move up or move out" philosophy for CW. How's that working? I chose "move out", rather than waste my time on snobs. 

Again and again, we see hams living in the past and truly believing that "what worked" then will work now. They don't know any actual kids, except perhaps their grandchildren, and everyone around them has learned not to tread on their precious delusions. Any kid can already get on Grandpa's HF rig under the control operator provision and experience the "magic" squall. But, by the time you'd explain the complex rules and procedures of making a contact, their eyes would glaze over and they'd be thinking of an excuse to get out of the room. They won't be "hooked", that's for sure. 

About a year ago, I put my tablet in front of a 17 year-old tuned to an online websdr receiver. After ten minutes, they said "This is really boring!". They didn't express any interest in actually talking to any of those people. Now, you can say, "That's just one kid", but there was no fascination whatsoever. Obviously, what you would rather do is pretend that kids today are exactly like you were back in the Bronze Age. Yeah, that's not dishonest or delusional, is it? And, if you find one kid that is interested in HF, you'll suddenly be willing to extrapolate that single case to an entire generation, won't you? Weird how that works in only the one direction.

The problems with the hobby aren't based in the licensing. They're based on the relevance of amateur radio in the current technological climate, the skewed demographic found on the air, the isolation from the real world of those operating, the rigid conformity and tightly-controlled conversations, and the bizarre belief among hams that they are some kind of technical elite. Hams have become so accustomed to lying to each other about the state of the hobby, that they are actually believing their own "spin".