Foundations of Amateur Radio

Today I want to talk about Politics. I can hear you groan from here, so hold your horses, stow your tar and feathers and put your pitchfork back in the barn.

Amateur Radio is a hobby. It's to do with electronics and physics and the ionosphere and other cool stuff. Some people call Amateur Radio a thousand hobbies in one and that's a pretty good description.

Underlying Amateur Radio are the people. Those who have spent their time studying, learning new skills, doing tests, passing exams, as well as people who are interested bystanders, not necessarily licensed, but drawn towards the bounty that Amateur Radio as a hobby represents.

An interesting phenomenon among people is their varying level of passion. Some people are passionate about their dog, others about their children, others are passionate about cars, or baking, or in our case, passionate about Amateur Radio.

Passion has been explained to me once as a "big elephant". You sit on its back and it takes you where you want to go. Gentle nudging makes the elephant change direction, but if it gets excitable or startled, it'll go where ever it wants and all you can do is be a passenger and hold on tight.

If you mix passion and Amateur Radio, there are times when that will result in heated discussion about the merits or pitfalls of a particular radio, an antenna or some other aspect of the hobby.

If you group people together into radio clubs then those clubs are made of passionate individuals who come together to promote the objects of their club. As people group and discuss, opinions differ, goals morph and change and aims and objectives are blurred.

Before long, you get special interest groups, proponents and opponents, elections, board meetings, stoushes, mis-management, legal action and the whole gamut of life.

To complicate matters, Amateur Radio uses a public resource, radio spectrum. This is generally managed and maintained by a regulator, which in turn is generally managed by, politicians.

What this means is that as a Radio Amateur you should not be surprised to learn that politics plays a part just as it does in the rest of society.

I can still hear you muttering from here. My In-Box hasn't yet seen any derisive emails, but I can picture their arrival.

What does this all mean?

It means that Amateur Radio is not one thing. It never has been and never will be. For each individual there is a personal path to find and a journey to travel. For some this means that they'll become the Contester of the Year, for others it means that they'll invent a new gadget, others will use Amateur Radio as an excuse to travel the globe and others will use it to be the big cheese in their club.

Your role is simple.

Remember that this is a Hobby. That it's your hobby and that you have as much say in it as the next person.

Remember also that this Hobby exists because we've been given access to a public resource and it's our responsibility as Amateurs to conduct ourselves in a manner that befits that public trust.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB