Let's do satellites, launch balloons, bounce waves from meteorites, radiate airplanes, watch mini rockets spear through air and get new exciting people into the hobby without recreating the same mistakes of utility.

I am one of those so called “hams”. The ones you imagine with bright vests and cars sprouting antennas all over. You know the ones you don’t like that much and casually mock in close circles. I am one of them, at least in my mind. Belonging to both world always got me thinking about the issues surrounding amateur radio’s hobby and service side.

Recently Mastodon resurrected the very best of the Internet as we used to have in early 2000’s and flamed the topic of amateur radio as a emergency service. Normally these discussions burst into flames with range of emotional responses and not much come out of at the end but Mastodon fosters the best of every community and that discussion, although I did not take part, made me think about what I see in our hobby once again.

The reason why I stated that I am a prepper/emcomm type radio amateur because of my roots in the hobby starts with me volunteering in local search and rescue team. I met radios, antennas and all that colorful life through the lens of utility. Those radios that we loved and amazed were in our hands because they provided something needed to us. Communications. At those times when I started taking part with comm division of my team, cellphones were widely available but did not work that well where we were mostly operating and satellite communication were prohibitively expensive. So radios provided us and we loved them. This contradicting side of the hobby got entangled similarly with many amateurs.

We were organized and trained in our organisation. We all knew our hardware and their capabilities to the heart. We knew how, practically bind places together with the tools we have. Plan was easy, set base camp, get the big radio out, put the big antenna up, keep handhelds charged and monitor the field for lapses in connection to relay information. If needed send someone high ground with portables. For more than a decade we never needed HF actually. We always got some form of cell coverage where we deployed and at the end we got Inmarsat for instances that might occur.

Good old times with out taco trailer and antennas

Days passed by I fell apart with my beloved team, comm division reduced to maintaining hardware, most of our core branches got their sat phones and cellphone usage permeated life so deeply people were unable to think and organize without them. What happened after that was one of the most devastating disasters of our near past. Turkish/Syrian earthquake shook several major cities effecting milions of people. Everyone was caught off guard. With all that HF radios, handhelds, base UHF/VHF and sat phones in inventory we have almost lost contact to these cities where we had organized personal for a day and persistent low bandwidth for a week. Network recovered eventually, aids came to help in forms of satellite internet.

HF dipole that never got used

Point is not to prove cellular networks inabilities. I have confidence in human ingenuity for creating robust communications networks in any form or mod. Is current cellular is fit for this definition? Surely not but also was resilient enough to get back online in some capacity less then a day in a major catastrophe. In contrast radio communications are less reliable in some regards and satellites are still too expensive for general use. My point is what lacked was not the tools but organization and discipline. We as an well organised and funded state wide, dedicated SAR team lacked what it actually needed and all the radio amateurs in country were out of their league at that fateful night.

Checking if an amateur would relay me in case need it.

My team is quasi-professional with clear objectives. Radios like any other tool were only merely there to provide us hence given the opportunity of better tools such as personal satellite phones and cellular network we ditch their use in a blink. This fact is clearly different with radio amateurs. For all that matters radio amateurs are amateurs who love their radios and their capabilities regardless of what utility that might provide in a given scenario. No one wants to accept that fact publicly but it is what we see time after time with every involvement of radio amateurs to disaster responses.

Through out it’s history, radio amateurs did not exist to have an utility. People were and still are amazed with the fact what a string flung to a tree can achieve. This is something quite human. While we love to see our radio’s capabilities, like many fail to see, our hobby is quite social one. At the base of it you are calling someone else CQ in hopes of an answer. In general we love to see the real implications and social reactions to what we do and share the perceived amazement. We are little children showing of their garbage crafted toys to their elders proudly. In an disconnected world these apparatus we strung together from left over electronics and their relative amazing properties of long distant communications were akin to magic in the eye’s of the general public. It is still like that and you can see it in people when they learn that the sound coming from your radio is originating from thousands of kilometers away without any internet in it. Still the socially perceived utility of this technology is long gone and less people admire the abilities of these devices with their normal expectations. One common question to any ham summarizes everything: “but why?"

Hobbies do not and must not have a meaning. Some things we do, well, just for fun. It is quite recent, capitalist or calvinist invention of people and activities that must have an worthful outcome like becoming a startup or earning a living out of it. Some labors we do for joy regardless if it serves a purpose or not. Some joyful things create beneficial side products. If you create beautiful art, you enjoy it and also people enjoy and praise you. This brings satisfaction part and beyond one’s original urge to create. Some acts doesn’t create anything useful but can be still praised actively or passively. My favorite personal example is mountaineering. People perform one of the deadliest sport for no tangible outcome besides doing something because they can. Sometimes they do this in such remote places nobody even knows. Still people praise them for this seemingly meaningless act, either for self reflection or some secondary utility such as athletic benefits. There is also possibility of becoming mainstream and sexy. Think about computer geeks. In a decade these people become trendy and hip from being bullied everywhere. Why because computers got mainstream and pulled their followers out of mud to the top of billion dollar companies. This all begs the question if amateur radio fit any of these situations?

This is the pinnacle of our dilemma. To get our usual attention from society, nothing much left for amateur radio. At least as the way we know it. That is the reason when faced with the ultimate question of “why” besides the today’s obsession of “stem” benefits, most amateurs hold on to the utility of amateur radio in case of an emergency. All other reasons faded into the history since we can agree that hundred year old technology won’t be mainstream anytime soon(unless you count wifi as radio). This is the last line between a radio amateur and his dignity. It relieves the feeling of being a big child with very very expensive toys playing radio. “No, it serves a purpose”, “these radios are last things that will be working when shit hit the fan”… With this mentality we arrive prepper/emcomm category of amateur radio.

Prepper/emcomm view of amateur radio is a pure utilitarian one. You have radios, you create systems so you may communicate in the events of terrible things so either you survive or provide service to public/community. As one may see the relative similarities with a search and rescue teams approach to the radio. The only thing that gets tangled in this is the pride of the radio amateur in his hobby and his abilities. Nobody admires or congrats an unknown unseen hero behind a microphone. When providing a service intertwined with personal/group self expression needs, a conflict arises. A conflict that SAR communities quite familiar with, same one seeing those bright vested radio amateurs creates, a show off that tries to apply a tool in disregard of its suitability to the problem. Imagine a person with a 5 watt handheld claiming to be useful in a situation where every cell tower operates to their full capacity in the area of interest.

What differs two groups (radio amateurs and SAR) is not the tool or use of it but the reason behind it. From search and rescue perspective, any operative would jump to faster, dulplex-er, instant high bandwidth solution in a heartbeat. Emcomm/prepper type would not since the main purpose is not to solve the problem but solving the problem with spesific tool that is emotionally being invested in. Two group is also differ in their ways and motivations for organizing. A SAR team, at least a good one, needs tigth planning, training and organization to be operational in a harsh environment. This induces or self created incentive to do boring, hard things during normal times. Radio amateurs services so rarely actually needed that lacks the proper incentive to prepare, test, drill all those abilities amateurs claim to be able. All due respect to fellows but playing radio is just not useful enough in a dire situation when every minute translates into a saved life. Emergencies need, tested and minute ready systems and when you are organised enough to provide that you are close to a professional aid team than an amateur radio club. Alas, it is not 80’s anymore and today we have those needed systems so cheaply and so reliebly, it is only a matter of time that we may statistically never need radios ever again.

My point is not to bash the capacity of amateur radio may provide to public. I know a sun storm may fry things or Internet may go down. What I try to underline here is that that the possibility of that need is diminishing and it is happening fast. Radio amateurs needs to go back to the roots of the hobby and rediscover the sheer enjoyment of wiggling electromagnetic waves together without any expectation or validation from society. Like a mountaineer enjoys doing insanely admirable climb somewhere out of sigth. An artist creating most beautiful sculpture and cry alone from the sheer beauty of it. Catching that weird propagation and making a contact on 100mw to a distance even a jet can’t fly at once needs to be admirable without justifying it to capitalistic expectations of a society full with idiots. Let’s do satellites, launch balloons, bounce waves from meteorites, radiate airplanes, watch mini rockets spear through air and get new exciting people into the hobby without recreating the same mistakes of past. Otherwise what we will be left is boring old people and few disconnected alone amateurs not talking to each other.