Millennials Are Killing Ham Radio
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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Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but since ham radio no longer represents how the majority of people communicate today, maybe we shouldn't be holding onto the past and instead focus on how people communicate now?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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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).
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!
> 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.
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
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.
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.