General Category > Amateur Radio
Snotty Hams
Shortwave_Listener:
Luckily it seems some of the 7200 LSB ops are being forced to leave, Radio Algerienne uses 7200 AM starting at 0300 UTC and it forces anybody off the frequency. Only once have I heard anyone even attempt to talk over Radio Algerienne.
Charlie_Dont_Surf:
Yes, it took me some time out of radio (decades) and then coming back to it to realize there are a fair number of assholes in the hobby.
Everybody? No, absolutely not. But a nerdy hobby dominated by old white men is going to have a bunch of people with sticks up their butts and low social skills, for sure.
Two of my observations:
1) There are a large quantity of hams that think that because they know Ohm's Law that this qualifies them to be experts on every technical topic under the sun. It doesn't. I say that as a person with a graduate degree in EE who has decades of professional experience and actually has to know what I'm talking about (otherwise I get fired) as opposed to some random clown you meet on 2 meters. As a ham friend who is also a senior member of the IEEE and a published author in his field of expertise said to me years ago, "Many hams think they are experts on everything but the reality is that they don't know shit."
2)
--- Quote from: ThaDood on November 05, 2022, 1920 UTC ---The other thing that I´ve run into is Big-Gun snobbery. Ya know... Those folks with several Icom IC-7851´s, +100ft towers, multi-acreage arrays, broadcast quality audio processing, legal 1.5kW power all the time, etc.
--- End quote ---
Exactly this. Then they have the gall to rag on people who do FT8 or SOTA or VHF because they are not "he man" enough. You hear this a lot on the SSB DX windows. Guys whining because they blew $50k on a station and they have only two stations to talk to. That's not my (our) problem, dude, and don't blame anyone else on your unexpected free time and lack of QSOs. It's also elitist: "You can't play with us unless you blow $50k on a station."
Ham radio is dying and attitudes like this are not welcoming to younger people, who largely don't have that kind of money and the land for three 150-foot towers with stacked monobanders on each.
But that's what you get with a bunch of men whose tower height is inversely proportional to their amount of self-esteem.
NJQA:
I usually avoid this type of discussion but I feel a need to add my two cents.
When I got my ham license 50 years ago, it took a lot of work. Exams were held at the FCC offices, CW proficiency was required, and you had no idea what the exam questions were (the Bash study guides came out years later). I studied intensely for months to pass the test.
Every other ham I met back then worked just as hard to get their license. It took real effort and the license meant you really wanted to be part of the community. Having passed the exam hurdle meant something - I got my first jobs in the electronics industry partly because of my having earned a ham license. A ham license had some meaning back then. Not so today. I rarely mention my ham radio background when I am involved in professional activities today.
Fast forward to the present. Now you see people like W6NBC hosting 1 day cram sessions that emphasis pushing the test answers into short term memory and taking the exam that day.
My point is this: you value the things that you work for. If something comes too easily you won’t value it the same as something you had to work for. You see this exhibited a lot on the air with “hams behaving badly.”
Today when I meet a new ham at our local club I am friendly and welcoming but in the back of my mind I always wonder if this is someone here for the long run or if they will be gone in 6 months. I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are here because they love the hobby. But too many drift away because they were never that interested.
MDK2:
--- Quote from: NJQA on November 12, 2022, 1704 UTC ---My point is this: you value the things that you work for. If something comes too easily you won’t value it the same as something you had to work for. You see this exhibited a lot on the air with “hams behaving badly.”
Today when I meet a new ham at our local club I am friendly and welcoming but in the back of my mind I always wonder if this is someone here for the long run or if they will be gone in 6 months. I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they are here because they love the hobby. But too many drift away because they were never that interested.
--- End quote ---
The first part is a rather harmful stereotype, as many of the confirmed bad actors on ham radio have been licensed for decades. I see very few younger newer hams doing that. Why would they? If a younger person wants to be a troll, social media offers an almost infinite amount of opportunities which all have greater reach than ham radio.
As far as the second part goes, speaking as someone who's only relatively recently licensed, I find that though there are clubs around and folks say they want to welcome more to the hobby, they still often (perhaps subconsciously) have a standoffishness about them as if it's more up to us to try to show we belong than it is on old hands to welcome new blood. I think you express that yourself - "but in the back of my mind I always wonder if this is someone here for the long run or if they will be gone in 6 months." You may say you give them the benefit of the doubt, but make no mistake, sometimes we can sense that attitude when meeting folks like yourself.
I want to make it clear that you don't come across as the kind of ham under discussion here. But lukewarm reception can be just as discouraging as outright disdain.
autovon:
That website forum is an echo chamber of narcissistic richards.
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