I sat and watched five tables of young radio enthusiasts compete to see who could build the tallest tower out of index cards. They’d been tasked with writing one thing common to every person at their table on each card. Blank cards didn’t count. No tape or paperclips. Who could reach the highest heights?
In the end it was our youngest cohort that took the prize. They understood that any tower can only be as strong as the base upon which it stands. They gave a lot of thought to their foundation, built it wide and strong, and all of their progress stemmed from that point. It worked and they won. Then, of course, they took great pleasure in knocking down what they had so carefully constructed; grinning madly the whole time.
This little exercise was an icebreaker on the opening night of the 2021 Youth on the Air camp for IARU Region 2. It was the first of many smash successes for the week. We would go on to launch and track a high-altitude balloon, contact the international space station and put many, many QSOs is the W8Y special event station log. The event was a foundation upon which those campers will build lifelong relationships that will stand the test of time.
We addressed many different topics in the short span of one week. The main theme though, always, was Amateur Radio.
I’ve always considered Amateur Radio as the hub at the center of a great wheel of STEM activities. You can start at a topic on the outside of the wheel and, almost without fail, find a spoke that leads straight back to Amateur Radio at the center.
I thought more and more about that comparison as the week progressed. I considered it as I watched our campers use their cell phones and laptops to log in to remote stations back at their home QTHs. Sometimes they were looking to make real contacts and sometimes they just wanted to prank their fellow campers who were operating at the camp station. It was, at times, the ham radio equivalent of horseplay but it was a joy to see. These kids were having so much fun on the air that you couldn’t help but be infected by their passion. I was there to teach that week but I’m the one who came home with lessons learned and things to consider.
As the week wore on I found myself thinking more and more about my wheel and spoke comparison. My mind eventually turned to the words of William Butler Yeats in the first stanza of his poem “The Second Coming”.
It reads:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
I realized as I listened to our dear campers share stories about their struggles with the Amateur Radio community that they are the innocent falcons and we are the falconers full of passionate intensity. They cannot hear us because, when they do listen, they hear about the way things were in our past. We promote the edicts of Amateur Radio as we knew then ages ago and we promote them with a passionate intensity because we love our hobby.
This in itself is not wrong or bad. On the contrary, to love the hobby with a passion is something to be commended. Our young falcons though, they lack the experience, lack the conviction, to stand up for the way that things can and should be now. We lose them in the winding gyre of yesterday’s Amateur Radio because we don’t bother to teach them how to fly on the airwaves of today. If we continue on this path then our center, Amateur Radio, will not hold. Things will fall apart.
Anything from the now, their present which is our future “isn’t real radio.” If I had a nickel for every time I heard about a negative experience with “the band police” or “some OM” during our week together I’d retire tomorrow and build that superstation of my dreams. The next generation of hams will learn to fly. Make no mistake; they are young people of powerful intelligence, and they will learn to do it without us if they have to.
We must not force them to fly alone. We owe it to the future generations of Amateur operators and to the very hobby itself to ensure that we prepare them for their future and not just for our past. We must embrace new technologies. We must accept that a cellphone or tablet is a core piece of today’s modern ham shack. The internet is for communication as well, and I’m sorry if you don’t like it. The next generation of hams hold those truths as a given and we owe it to them to support those same truths with the full force of our conviction.
The center must hold… FOR THE LOVE OF HAM RADIO.
