As some of you may know, I was first licensed some 26 years ago – I earned my Technician license shortly after the FCC dropped the Morse Code requirement. I had been interested in getting a license since I was in the 7th grade in California. I attended a class put on by the Mt. Diablo Amateur Radio Club at the local community college, but I couldn’t get the code lessons – it just eluded me. When my family moved from CA to NJ, I soon found myself in a church multi-purpose room with the guys from the Delaware Valley Amateur Radio Club trying to learn Morse code again, but the only thing that “stuck” was “dah-dit-dah-dit, dah-dah-dit-dah” (-.-. –.- or “CQ”). Once the code requirement was dropped, I earned my ‘ticket,’ and was randomly awarded my one and only callsign, N2VIP.
It would be almost 20 years later before I actually bought a radio, set up an antenna, and tried to actually do anything with my license, all of which was brought about because I googled “Irving Amateur Radio Club” before moving to Texas – I had a great club in my area back in NJ, but their meetings were held Tuesday nights, which in my town was “Boy Scout Night”, so I was already committed on Tuesday nights and couldn’t make the meetings. (And don’t get me started about the 5 acre lot with no HOA I left behind in NJ when I came to Texas, having never put up a single antenna on the lot…)
BVARC Field Day photo from 2019
There’s a lot of talk about the need to bring “the kids” into the hobby, many clubs send “ambassadors” to schools to talk about our hobby and they visit school STEM events to try and build some interest in “this thing of ours” among the youth. As well-intentioned as these efforts are, I think they miss the mark. Think back on your entrance into the hobby, it most likely was the next logical step in a life-long interest in things technical/electrical. You likely weren’t ‘targeted’ by the local club in an effort to boost membership numbers and “save the hobby” – in fact, you were probably surprised to find a group of people that shared your interests wondering where they had been. This is a hobby that people grow into, and attempts to lure young children into the hobby are, in my opinion, mis-guided. I understand the assumption that children in STEM programs in their local school district are the most likely to be interested in our hobby, but it assumes that the students in STEM programs are there as part of a life-long interest in all manner of things technical. The truth is STEM is, in many cases, just another bullet item on the imaginary college application the child’s parents are working on the first 18 years of their child’s life. Now certainly there are students now, just like you and I were ‘back in the day,’ that loved being part of the “A.V. Squad”, showing teachers how to work the Apple ][ computer the school just bought and so on, but sadly in my experience, the rise of STEM hasn’t increased the number of truly ‘tech-curious’ students.
An example of an eye-catching mobile install
If we want to encourage others to join us in our hobby, the best thing we can do as a club is to put ourselves out in the community, be it working public service events, supporting first responders in times of need, or simply going out and doing what we do in the public square (setting up temporary stations, like we do for Field Day or community events). We need to put ourselves out in the community, doing what we do, and over the course of those events we’ll find the folks that have always been interested in all things technical, and being curious what is going on under the pavilion in the park will walk over and introduce themselves. To borrow a line from an old movie “If you build it, they will come.” The best way to attract people to the hobby is to make the hobby look attractive.
RWK “HungryHam” Lunch Meeting
Recently our club has suffered a membership slump – we have less than 50 members at the present time – but right around us are two clubs each with more than 200 members, so clearly there is a significant level of interest in the hobby in our area, but why is our club membership so low by comparison? Well, to put it bluntly, perhaps it is because each of the two clubs I referenced (the Dallas Amateur Radio Club and the Richardson Wireless Klub) have a number of activities they engage in month after month designed to attract and retain new members. The Richardson club, for example, has a weekly lunch at a local BBQ restaurant that attracts between 25-35 attendees on a Wednesday afternoon, and the “lunch” goes for two or three hours. It is not a formal lunch, there’s no signing in, but area hams come, share ideas, show off latest projects, and help each other solve technical problems. In addition, RWK recently started hosting weekend Transmitter Fox Hunts that involve one member dropping off a low-powered transmitter somewhere within the city of Richardson late Friday night, and the Fox Hunt goes as long as the battery power remains (typically 24 hours, give or take). There is no required start or end time, club members and others are encouraged to search for the Fox on their own, as their schedule permits.
DARC Lecture and Lab
These are the kinds of activities that sustain a club, the key to growing a club can be seen in the Dallas club – they run nightly nets on their 146.880 repeater, including several very popular nets on Saturday night, along with working several public service events – like the Lifewalk and Turkey Trot charity events, as well as setting up their trailer at the Frontiers of Flight museum for public events. As for sustaining activities, they have monthly “Lecture and Lab” classes, and a couple times a year they hold “Tech Net on the Hill,” a semi-annual outing where multiple speakers are scheduled, covering numerous topics of interest.
Another local club, the Metrocrest Amateur Radio Society (MARS) has a Saturday morning breakfast that is well-attended, as well as monthly “play days” one Saturday a month where they descend on a particular location (usually the activity room of a local library) and “geek out” on a particular topic – sometimes it’s fairly structured, other times it’s a hodge-podge of marginally-related things where members share what they’ve been working on. One memorable “play day” was set up to help club members program their various HTs, allowing club members familiar with the various radio help other members get their radios setup for local repeaters. These are the activities that help clubs to grow and retain members, these are the kinds of activities we need to embrace in the Irving Amateur Radio Club.
Before I sign off, just one more quick thought – “back in the day” Hams had big metal and wire antennas strung all over their backyards, telegraphing to all around that “here lives a ham radio operator.” With the explosion in the number of “planned communities” and large housing developments, all with HOAs intent on preserving property values thru the homogenization of huge tracts of homes, it is all but impossible for a curious young man or woman to spot a neighbor’s “antenna farm” and work up the courage to knock on the door and start asking questions. Ask yourself, how would anyone know you are an Amateur Radio Operator, and how do you make yourself available to help mentor a curious neighbor into the hobby? Do you wait for them to arrive at a club meeting and ask for help? Do you “let your freak flag fly” by putting Amateur Radio Operator license plates on your car? Do you take a radio to the park (or even the front yard) and “play radio”? Do you participate in any local radio nets that a new ham might tune into after buying their first radio? Do you ever carry a handheld radio outside a club event? Do you have a ham antenna on your car? Put another way, how would a “fellow traveler,” someone interested in Amateur Radio know that you are a kindred spirit and available for mentoring?
If you are concerned about the future of our hobby, I encourage you to take a moment and think about what you could do to make your neighbors aware of your hobby, see the fun you are having, and decide they want to join in the fun.