Share The Airwaves

It’s OK to just want to play radio! 

This weekend, as I was watching an email thread unravel on a ham radio reflector, I was reminded of one of my nephews.  He was about 4 years old, maybe he just turned 5.  I will call him Younger Precocious Nephew, or YPN for short.  YPN was at his older brother’s Little League game.  YPN was bored and was playing quietly under the bleachers with his little green army men. 

Another little boy, about 3 years old, came over and looked enviously at YPN.  YPN generously offered to let the boy, NK for short, play.  But YPN had a serious question that needed answered first. He asked NK:  “Do you want to play World War I, Waterloo, or the American Revolution?”.  NK had no clue.  So YPN tried again and NK still had no idea. He just wanted to play with the toy soldiers.

YPN was becoming frustrated when his mother intervened and explained that NK had no clue what the question was and YPN should just pick one and move on.  YPN reluctantly did that. 

What does that have to do with radio?  The thread I was watching with someone making a very reasonable request to attempt to practice their emergency communications (emcomm) skills outside of the weekly emcomm net.  That’s all.  As the thread played out, one poster replied that rather than do simplex messaging (station to station) they should learn how to relay messages from one station to another to get to the final destination. Then when they mastered that technique worry about simplex.  And you guessed, that poster didn’t offer to set a sked (schedule) to help the newbie emcomm operator do that.

I don’t know how many times I have heard some variation of don’t… 

• I don’t make QSOs with QRP stations (low power). 
• I don’t talk to anyone who I do not have perfect armchair copy on. 
• If you are less than 59, I cannot {won’t) hear you. 

And so on.

Really?  Have we become that unfriendly?  Then we whine the air waves are dead. 

Come on folks!  This is a hobby.  Sometimes we don’t share common interests:  CW, EMCOMM, moonbounce, SSTV, all have niches.  But ‘ya know what?  At the end of the day, it’s all about Amateur Radio.

So share the airwaves!  You just might learn something too.

See ‘ya down the log.

Frank KB3PQT