Ladies & Gentlemen:

Several days ago, I shared with Director Olson a recent email from Bryce Salmi, KB1LQC discussing his view of Amateur Radio’s future to provide some insight on millennials and Generation X hams for PSC. Bryce and his brother are lifetime hams and recipients of several ARRL scholarships in the past. Bryce (25 years old) works as a design mechanical engineer with SpaceX, and he is a contributor to the Falcon 9 rocket. After reading it, Kent urged me to share this email more widely. The email was prompted by a conversation among Bryce, Sean Kutzko and me about needs, desires and interests of his generation. While brief, it is pithy, direct, compelling and authentic. The video link contained in the phrase “busy with our day job” is a short SpaceX film that shows Bryce and his contemporaries at the Falcon9 launch. I share it with you below:

Sean, Tom

                Thanks for the email. I do remember working with you [Sean] when Brent and I ran CollegeARC.com back around 2009, the ARRL engaged with us to help recruit college students. It turned into a committee that largely consisted of non-college students trying to figure out how to interest college students into ham radio unfortunately. I believe it was the Atlantic Division Committee For Amateur Radio Recruitment. We are onto bigger projects in ham radio that I won’t mention right now as they are in their early stages but it worth noting that all of our side-projects now happen when we’re not busy with our day job… so time is limited. Therefore I’ll keep it brief, to the point, and extremely honest.

Ham radio must change. The hobby as the ARRL knows it, where you make QSOs and aspire to earn a license to operate HF, is not what the ham radio of the future should look like. The future is higher in frequency (for the most part). Communications are too easy with cell phones, skype, email, etc. It’s free, fast, and the bandwidth is insane. You and I watch HD video on our cell phones while in the passenger seat of a car going 70mph down a highway. This means one thing, ham radio as a communications hobby is irrelevant to the future.

How do I know this? Not only did I independently come to this conclusion after years of operating HF, reaching 20wpm Morse code (my favorite mode), and running several clubs including helping to bring the RIT amateur radio club from one member in 2007 to around 20 members by 2012 but I also hear it from my peers anytime I bring up amateur radio. Especially my highly technical kick-ass coworkers at SpaceX who represent a demographic that would unleash creativity and innovation ham radio hasn’t seen in decades on the hobby. Few have their licenses citing that it’s not worth it, just a novelty activity. Those that do have their licenses did so for scholarships or to operate high power FPV drone gear and never had a QSO in their life… again citing that most of the hobby is a novelty they are not interested in, many cite no interested in verbally communicating with others (though they would in person i.e. club meetings). As for technology projects in mainstream ham radio media… 40 meter CW homebrew kits doesn’t make any of us excited and 1200 baud APRS is not impressive since you literally cannot pay to get internet that slow in 2016.

So with that honest assessment out of the way I am extremely optimistic of amateur radio’s future. That is because I know I’m not the only one that thinks this is a solvable problem. Amateur radio is fundamentally an amazing hobby, an amazing opportunity from the FCC, and a medium to experiment with.

FCC part 97.1d: Expansion of the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts.

Right there. The FCC reminds us that ham radio isn’t all about providing emergency communications or ragchewing with a friend on a repeater. It’s a medium, a sandbox to play and to learn in.

I’d like to suggest to you and to the ARRL that if you want millennials, a generation that struggles to remember a time when their house didn’t have a computer in it with internet, to get excited about ham radio en masse then consider the idea that ham radio should start to morph into something you may not be comfortable with. Change is OK. I believe ham radio will survive if it embraces that it’s no longer a communications service, ham radio is a communications medium. Ham radio is only relevant today and in the future if it’s the means to accomplish an act, not the act being accomplished.

Examples:

• Amateur radio is instantly more interesting if being used to gather remote telemetry such as sensor data and GPS position as well as being commandable remotely (APRS is similar but completely outdated for this)
• Data rates of at least 30kbps or higher should be ubiquitous, cheap, and easy to understand
• Amateur radio is the perfect platform to learn digital wireless fundamentals on.
  • How to packetize data and transmit it over RF
  • How to design a digital radio into a PCB for a project (CC430 for example which has been on the market for a decade, decade!)
  • How to use data from a radio to interface with a computer such as a user interface or an actuator
• Amateur radio can be the way people learn digital wireless communication fundamentals, inspiring them to go on and not only become professionals but innovating in the hobby itself as a result. It’s a sandbox.
• I should be able to go online, learn how to experiment with ham radio just as I would if I wanted to learn C or Python to program projects and be able to unleash my creativity using ham radio.

I believe ham radio will always have a communications component to it with people operating SSB, FM, CW, etc. It will however be secondary to the main activity of using amateur radio as a medium and a learning tool. The FCC has given us use of Billions of dollars’ worth of frequency allocations to use, not to just establish two-way communication on. Please take these comments as constructive criticism. I want the best for ham radio, it’s been an amazing hobby that allowed me to not only have fun in but it helped give me the experience necessary to professionally push my own limits. I often directly cite my amateur radio projects as a main component of why I was hired by SpaceX. Companies like SpaceX value ingenuity and creativity with technology. Ham radio is an EE’s playground with this regard.

Bryce Salmi

KB1LQC

[Design Engineer, SpaceX, 25 years old, winner of 2 ARRL Scholarships for Rochester Institute of Technology]

Wishing you a safe and pleasant weekend.

Gallagher 3/9/17

Tom Gallagher – NY2RF

Chief Executive Officer

ARRL Headquarters

ARRL - The national association for Amateur Radio™

860 594 0404 cell 704 907 7158

tgallagher@arrl.org