On 07/22/2014 11:05 AM, Robert Bruninga wrote:
The value of ham radio is providing communications where other systems cannot. And of course, playing with toys just for fun.
I'd flip that around. With the Internet, mobile phones and other ubiquitous communications, about the sole reason left for ham radio to exist is **education**. And playing with toys just for fun is often quite educational as well.
Ham radio provides a hands-on opportunity to teach and learn radio (and electronics) technology, and you still can't find anything like it anywhere else.
Emergency communications is still in there somewhere, but in all honesty I now see it as a distant second.
And if one is to teach oneself communications and electronics technology through ham radio, then ham radio really ought to use something like the communications and electronics technologies that the outside world is using today, not just those the world was using 40 years ago.
--Phil