Category: Millennials in Amateur Radio

Engaging Youth in Amateur Radio, Hoshnasi Style

Hoshnasi, a.k.a Josh Nass, KI6NAZ, is a shining star in the ham radio YouTube universe. Besides gear reviews, portable and SOTA operating, tutorials and discussion, livestreams, and pro-tips for newcomers, He created the Ham Radio Crash Course – a guided journey for hams and hams-to-be to be inspired to get or upgrade their amateur radio license through real-life experiences.

He invited me to talk about the state of Youth in Amateur Radio, and specific ways to get young people interested, involved, excited, and hooked on ham radio – see that interview here.

Here’s the summary:

  1. Lots of (disparate) youth activities taking place – Scouting/JOTA, YACHT, YARC, YOTA, YDXA, WRTC youth teams, etc – wouldn’t it be nice if we came together?
  2. Ham Radio in Education going strong. Ham radio is frequently used as a tool to explain science of waves, the cosmos, the atmosphere…
  3. Maker Movement is kind of passed…we need a new movement. The Hacker Movement! Lets start a ham radio hackathon!
  4. How to make your Radio Club more approachable to younger people – activities, modern and active web presence, ensuring newcomers aren’t left without an introduction and a mentor, having a public shack or members’ shack’s with an open door policy
  5. Modern technologies of the internet going to hit ham radio’s mainstream in 5 years – Remote operating, SDR, bluetooth/wifi/internet integration, Livestreaming, eSports style competitions, online & remote VE testing, etc.

Josh followed it up with introducing a STEM club to ham radio. This class serves as a brilliant method of introducing and educating kids about ham radio. I think it should be required viewing for anyone who calls themself an Elmer.

Some key takeaways:

  1. Examples and realtime demonstrations. Josh did an example of what SSTV sounds like and how it’s decoded, and brought an antenna he can use to talk to satellites and the ISS.
  2. Connect to other well known topics (ISS, cell phones/internet, social media, geography, walkie talkies/CB radio)
  3. Downplay the license, but (quickly) make sure to explain why it’s needed. Josh had one slide and about 30 seconds of explanation. Too much can be detracting but too little might leave a surprise.
  4. Keep jargon to a minimum, and when jargon comes out, explain it in a few simple terms or analogies
  5. Q&A during and after to keep the audience included in the discussion. If the audience is mute, read from a list of frequently asked questions that you can answer yourself – there are always questions, even simple ones, but most people are afraid to ask..

You can find more blogs about Youth in Ham Radio here on N0SSC.com: http://n0ssc.com/posts/category/youth-in-ham-radio

I also have a simple list of all my posts at http://n0ssc.com/post-archive, where you can easily CTRL+F “youth” to find more like this!

73!

Introducing the Young Amateurs Radio Club

Today is a great day. Amateur Radio has a new radio club made by the youth, for the youth:

https://yarc.world/

We founded a club for young hams! from amateurradio

That’s David, KD2OAH , who posted this thread on reddit. Unsurprisingly, some hams were iffy and curmedgoney about the idea of a Discord (which is cancer, by the way, see below or here 🙄) when there’s already a reddit IRC. He also initially wanted it to be for Young Hams on Long Island, NY, but seeing that there was  1.) there’s probably not a lot of young hams on Long Island and 2.) probably no discord for young people in ham radio at all and, I asked him, among others, to extend it to the whole ham-o-sphere. That lead to the creation of the Young Hams discord chat. It was way more popular than David thought, currently at 70 active members (and 200 members total), dozens of chat rooms, a few voice chat rooms, a gaming hams spinoff and it’s all almost too hard to keep up with at times, which is a great thing.

There are several youth oriented US radio clubs and organizations [1][2][3][4] but they’ve all been created by older hams as an initiative to attract youth into the hobby1. They have served their purpose well, as now the youth are beginning to form their own clubs.

There is no hard and fast age rule: I’m 26, and some of our members are in their late 30s. Most members are either in high school or college.

If you don’t remember the cold war, are two standard deviations less than the mean age of radio amateurs, or are a strong supporter of youth in the hobby, then you are welcome to join. YARC doesn’t discriminate, but maybe don’t go on rants starting with ‘BACK IN MY DAY….’

And all political discussion can be held in #politics.

Many more cool things to come soon!

🆒
1. Youngsters on the Air (YOTA) is the only other club I know of that was started by and for young hams. It’s centered around IARU Region 1 – Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Northern Asia.↩

It’s Happening! Millennials in Amateur Radio!

http://www.newschannel6now.com/story/37520668/wf-amateur-radio-society-looks-to-add-millennial

I can’t help but hope my wildly debated article is starting to make its motions through the amateur radio community. Conceitedness aside, it’s really awesome to see a club make a very public stride into lowering the age of their radio club.

Is your radio club a bit gray on top? Consider forming a youth interests committee, and marketing your club to younger people (and don’t forget their parents!) by hosting easy and free activities throughout the year, creating scholarship funds, giving presentations for schools and libraries, publishing your field day site and GOTA (and other on-the-air activity) information in highly public areas and social media outlets.