The hamfest held each year in the St. Louis suburb of Collinsville, IL is called Winterfest. I blogged earlier about the hamfest getting a windfall this year in adding to their growing set of Forums and other programs on contesting and so forth by welcoming the Wes Schum Symposium. Here’s how the Winterfest 2020 Chair […]
Attracting Youth to Ham Radio: Get Out of Their Way!
Update: Reprinted with permission in Radio ZS Vol. 73, No. 4 2020, the journal of the South African Radio Society. Amateur radio has a demographic problem. In the U.S., there is a clear belief that members of the hobby are old. And getting older. What that means in actual age distribution just isn’t known. Unfortunately, […]
Public Libraries: New Served Agencies?
A long-used term by the American Radio Relay League, the National Association for Amateur Radio, is “served agency.” Almost without exception, it refers to a government agency or non-governmental organization that provides vital response support in times of disaster or, at least, in times of public service. In fact, the ARRL has official memos of […]
Plant the Seed! Sow the Future
There is much rhetoric in amateur radio about getting more people into the hobby. Especially young people. The ARRL has a Teachers Institute which reflects the conventional “train-the-trainer” model of getting K-12 school teachers (mostly) into ham radio in order to expose their students to the fun and learning. The challenge of this is that […]