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Is Ham radio a dying breed... will Ham radio end ?

waloshin

waloshin

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Oct 9, 2008
3,566
402
Do you believe Ham radio is a dying hobby? Do you think Ham radio will be gone within the next 10+ years.
 
Dying yes, gone no.

I haven't looked at the statistics, but there are plenty of people still buying equipment...
 
Everybody knows ham is a poorly broadcasting meat. Anyone serious about radio is going to be using at least turkey by now.
 
It has a small but extremely passionate group of enthusiasts, so I think it will stick around. Also they are encouraging more young people to get their licence.
 
waloshin said:
Do you believe Ham radio is a dying hobby? Do you think Ham radio will be gone within the next 10+ years.
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Seriously, where do you come up with this ****.

Ham Radio will always be around as it will always be the last form of emergency communication.
 
Could very well be. Spam you say? ;)

I was musing about the name, ham radio operator.

I wonder if the professional radio operators back in the day gave them that name because they were so ham-fisted on the Morse code key.

And no, before you ask, I was not there. :p

:D
 
We have a team setup to use this system since a lot of radio communications are going digital, the ham radio is nice when other systems are down etc. I don't see them going bye bye, but used less, yes.
 
Wally, I really despair for you. So it's to be a ham radio on your trail bike to seek aid when your GPS craps out and your sun glasses are caked in mud and your sneakers are stuck fast in the boggy trail. For your bed time reading, I give you;

KGB:D
 
Grey Beard said:
Wally, I really despair for you. So it's to be a ham radio on your trail bike to seek aid when your GPS craps out and your sun glasses are caked in mud and your sneakers are stuck fast in the boggy trail. For your bed time reading, I give you;

KGB:D
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Perfect!
 
senseless said:
CB radio died a long time ago too.
Click to expand...

I had a modified RCI 2970 with a 500 watt linear amp in my car for years. Loved hitting the lowers for skip seeing how far I could talk. Had all kinds of friends on the CB for years back in the 90s. 2000s came and people started disappearing. Last time I turned it on about six months ago, there was nothing but truckers out there.

Unplugged the radio and took it out of the car. Sad everyone moved on.
 
CB was the Internet chat room of it's day and became hugely popular in the 70s. It fell apart when the arms race in linear power boosters, which were illegal, jammed the channels and made communication impossible.
 
senseless said:
CB was the Internet chat room of it's day and became hugely popular in the 70s. It fell apart when the arms race in linear power boosters, which were illegal, jammed the channels and made communication impossible.
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LOL That's for sure. I had a friend back around 1994 who had a CB radio and a linear amp as well. We would sit on top of ice cream hill (Safeway parking lot with a 31 Flavors next door in north Denver over looking the city) for hours and walk all over everyone.
 
MacNut said:
Seriously, where do you come up with this ****.

Ham Radio will always be around as it will always be the last form of emergency communication.
Click to expand...

For sure.

When sun spots / cyber warfare / terrorist take out satelites / cell phones / internet, jump on the lower bands and bounce around the world. All you need are batteries and/or a generator. I believe the ultra-low bands are how the Navy communicates with submerged nuclear subs.

Definitely not the popular activity it once was in the USA, but certainly not dying, especially in "3rd world" areas. I don't have any statistics, but anecdotally I can say that I am surprised at how many people I run into from my generation (i'm 64) that are geting back into Ham radio. I was active until about 20 years ago and am looking for a rig now.

Also, I am astounded at what classic Ham gear (Hallicrafters, Collins, Hammerlund) goes for on Ebay.

So I will look for a mobile rig with a kilowatt amp and put it in a 57 Chevy Nomad next to my iPhone / iPad / 11" MBA. And, of course, XM radio set on Fifties on 5

DanO
 
doherrick said:
When sun spots / cyber warfare / terrorist take out satelites / cell phones / internet, jump on the lower bands and bounce around the world. All you need are batteries and/or a generator.
Click to expand...

I used to be a ham, and I've lived in parts of the world (at different times, some of them 40+ years ago) where HF (high frequency) radio was the only communications mode. And it worked very well.

HF radio is well-understood, very robust and requires no infrastructure beyond power. So as others have mentioned, in emergencies it's usually what keeps functioning the longest.

I could post clips of a very expensive sat phone system (dish, solar panels, the works) that the EU donated to one region of a war-torn Pacific island I know well (Bougainville), sitting dead and useless. It worked for a little while, then stopped. There was no one trained to repair it and no spare parts were available.

Right next to it was a simple HF transceiver and I have video of one of my "sisters" using it to order medical supplies from 100 miles away. Depending on conditions, she could "get out" several hundred miles.

The transceiver was cheap, spares were available, and a relatively untrained person could swap out circuit boards and troubleshoot the antenna.

Who's against cellphones and tablets and wifi and all the rest? Not me. But I think that too many people either forget about, or never really understood the serious infrastructure required to make those devices work. If the infrastructure goes down, your devices are useless.

For us in the first world, I'm talking emergencies, like natural disasters. But for the rest of the world, I'm talking about reliable, daily communications.

With radio, all you need is a power source.

As for the classic gear, I sure wish I had my Collins 75A4 back again (to sell).
 
monokakata said:
I used to be a ham, and I've lived in parts of the world (at different times, some of them 40+ years ago) where HF (high frequency) radio was the only communications mode. And it worked very well.

HF radio is well-understood, very robust and requires no infrastructure beyond power. So as others have mentioned, in emergencies it's usually what keeps functioning the longest.

I could post clips of a very expensive sat phone system (dish, solar panels, the works) that the EU donated to one region of a war-torn Pacific island I know well (Bougainville), sitting dead and useless. It worked for a little while, then stopped. There was no one trained to repair it and no spare parts were available.

Right next to it was a simple HF transceiver and I have video of one of my "sisters" using it to order medical supplies from 100 miles away. Depending on conditions, she could "get out" several hundred miles.

The transceiver was cheap, spares were available, and a relatively untrained person could swap out circuit boards and troubleshoot the antenna.

Who's against cellphones and tablets and wifi and all the rest? Not me. But I think that too many people either forget about, or never really understood the serious infrastructure required to make those devices work. If the infrastructure goes down, your devices are useless.

For us in the first world, I'm talking emergencies, like natural disasters. But for the rest of the world, I'm talking about reliable, daily communications.

With radio, all you need is a power source.

As for the classic gear, I sure wish I had my Collins 75A4 back again (to sell).
Click to expand...

Do the older sets work better than newer equipment?
 
barkomatic said:
Do the older sets work better than newer equipment?
Click to expand...

I doubt it. It's just that they're classics.

I have what's by now a not-very-new Japan Radio Corp (JRC) NRD-525 that I'm sure would spank my old Collins in any side-by-side test (although I had the NRD-525 outfitted with Collins filters).

But the 75A4 and its ilk speak of another era - black crackle finish, glowing tubes (lots of them . . . the 75A4 had 22 tubes), heat, knobs to turn, discrete components you could work on yourself, and they actually had interesting smells, too. So I'm not surprised that they fetch good prices.

Here's a 75A4:
http://www.w1ujr.net/collins_75a4.htm

Here's a NRD-525
http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/commrxvr/nrd525.html

Which one is more cool (as it were?). I leave it to you. But in the modern world, the NRD is a lot more useful

Here's what I'd like to have:
http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/commrxvr/0340.html

Well, enough thread-jacking for today.
 
monokakata said:
I doubt it. It's just that they're classics.

I have what's by now a not-very-new Japan Radio Corp (JRC) NRD-525 that I'm sure would spank my old Collins in any side-by-side test (although I had the NRD-525 outfitted with Collins filters).

But the 75A4 and its ilk speak of another era - black crackle finish, glowing tubes (lots of them . . . the 75A4 had 22 tubes), heat, knobs to turn, discrete components you could work on yourself, and they actually had interesting smells, too. So I'm not surprised that they fetch good prices.

Here's a 75A4:
http://www.w1ujr.net/collins_75a4.htm

Here's a NRD-525
http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/commrxvr/nrd525.html

Which one is more cool (as it were?). I leave it to you. But in the modern world, the NRD is a lot more useful

Here's what I'd like to have:
http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/commrxvr/0340.html

Well, enough thread-jacking for today.
Click to expand...

Wow, not a cheap hobby! The Collins definitely is the nicer looking. :)
 
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