Not dead - Radio Hobby

Yeah, an email thread from 2020 regarding MW DXing (AM radio for the unafflicted).  Nothing to add except that I do a column for IRCA in addition to LWCA and have volunteered to help with the WTFDA newsletter as they re-organize.  I think a SWLing Post article I did made it into the CIDX Messenger as well.  So serious about the radio hobby as I said.  

 On Sun, Nov 29, 2020 at 9:10 PM Pxxx Bxxxxxxx <xxxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

> What I have noticed is that as the average age of radio DX’ers has increased and sadly with more passing on, we don’t seem to have many people coming along as “the next generation” who are willing and able to take on the hobby and see these in to the future. Those younger people generally seem to fit in to the first group.

>
> How seriously do you take the radio hobby? Do you see yourself taking on a more active / driving role in the future? Where do you see the radio hobby in 10 – 20 years’ time?


The age thing is just demographics.  We're still burning through a
large cohort born after WW2 and stretching to the mid-60s.
Demographers and especially marketers like to lump all those people
into the "baby boomer" category.  Demographically, that's true (exact
endpoints vary by country) but marketing-wise, it's specious, IMHO.
As someone born at the tail-end of the period, I don't share a lot
culturally with someone born in '46 - I'm a space age kid (Rockets to
the moon every damn week when I was 6!!).

Anyway, there aren't as many kids coming in to replace the ones dying.

ARRL in the (US) amateur world is very "gray" and it certainly shows.
I'm 57 and am annoyed at how un-savvy they are about things including,
but not limited to, amateur radio itself!  And I include most of the
Board and most of the staff in "they".

IRCA, too, is very gray but long-ago embraced an all-electronic
newsletter instead of staying burdened with a paper version - bravo!
(See also recent "reprint server" ... more evidence of forward
thinking)

I have to say, I take the hobby pretty seriously. If you get the
electronic version of LWCA's The Lowdown, you can see some evidence of
that in the issue that was just distributed.  :-)  I mean, there are
15 receivers that cover from about 150 kHz to 1.3 GHz within arm's
reach.  Oh, wait ... some HTs, too.  And an RTL-SDR Blog SDR.  And
I've been a ham for ~30 years.  And a scanner guy before that. And a
CBer before that.  And a MW DX guy, at some level, the whole time.

It's all radio to me. I am listening to a radio now, tuned to 107.7
MHz, HD2, here in the OKC market.  That's for entertainment.  Most of
the time, I'm not so interested in the *content* of the transmission,
just the transmission itself.  When people say "I have a cell phone
and can call anywhere in the world - why would I need a ham radio?" I
just smile and say "gosh I don't know", knowing that they Don't Get
It.

10-20 years out?  Well, if I am around, I'd like to think there will
be SOMETHING to listen to.  The folks propping up AM today will be
gone so I expect that unless AM station owners get with the program
and either embrace HD/MA3 mode or come up with something better (a
national network of 500 kW stations running DAB+?) there will be no AM
stations left.  FM isn't much better off.  Again, if station owners
can punch their way out of the paper bag they are in and made good use
of the opportunities that HDRadio provides them with (run those AM
programs on "HD4" and get rid of the RF part of your AM station) but
I'm not sure that will be enough.  At home, people have the network
(I'n in the boonies and have 100 Mbit/s up/down) and seem to be
content with corporate spy devices for audio and other entertainment.
There is still a good market targeting people in cars, but more and
more people just stream their entertainment from their mobile
computing device (that people still insist are "phones") to the better
speakers of their car.

In the year 2040, if man is still alive (rhyme is lost - sorry), I
expect their will  be stuff to listen to, but likely not Top 40 music.