President's Letter

Jonathan Pearce, WB2MNF

July 2025

---

As President of the Gloucester County Amateur Radio Club, my role is to encourage the creation of resources and activities, promote engagement in those activities, and highlight that engagement. Typically, this letter shows an extensive calendar of Club activities and accomplishments, but June 2025 presents unique challenges. Field Day, our flagship event, consumes much of the month’s preparations and occurs late - June 28-29 - past the CrossTalk deadline and preventing a report here. Additionally, I’ll be away for much of June at an underwater photography workshop, missing some of Field Day and limiting my involvement in other activities this month.

Given these constraints, this letter shifts focus to some of my thoughts on a challenge to the Club’s leadership :

• Evaluating new technologies to increase adoption by non-ham tech followers and how we can structure the Club’s activities to address them while balancing the interests of our existing users and those of a younger, technology-driven audience.

I know that this isn’t my usual format - please bear with me and I promise that I’ll return to normal next month. As has become usual, AI helped research and craft the language of this article although the ideas and considerations are mine.

Balancing Activities for Older and Newer Hams
The Gloucester County Amateur Radio Club has long been a haven for hams with diverse interests, and one of our ongoing challenges is balancing the needs of our older members, who thrive on traditional operating activities, with the emerging interests of newer hams. For many of our seasoned members, the essence of Amateur Radio lies in the time-honored pursuits of contesting, chasing DX contacts, engaging in rag-chewing sessions on the air, and participating in regular repeater nets - activities that have defined the hobby for decades and foster a sense of community through voice communication and competitive skill. This passion traces back to hams licensed before the mid-1970s, often self-described as “hackers” who built their own equipment from scratch, derisively referring to those who relied on commercial gear as “appliance operators.”

The advent of semiconductors and integrated circuits during the HeathKit era made homebrewing significant equipment impractical, and many hams licensed afterward have never built major projects, creating a potential divide with those who continue to experiment.

Meanwhile, newer hams, often drawn to the hobby through digital innovation or technical curiosity, seek different experiences that align with modern technology trends. This divide requires us to carefully structure our Club’s offerings to honor the rich traditions that keep our veteran members engaged while creating pathways for newcomers to explore cutting-edge possibilities, ensuring that GCARC remains a welcoming space for all.

Critiques from Outside
The Amateur Radio community has faced criticism from tech-savvy outsiders, particularly through online discussions from “hacker” sources, where strong opinions about the hobby’s current state have emerged. These critiques often depict Amateur Radio as a stagnant, gate kept hobby dominated by an aging, unengaging community, suggesting that the focus on traditional activities like repeater nets - seen as repetitive and uninteresting - alienates potential new participants.

Commenters have expressed disdain for what they perceive as outdated technology and restrictive regulations, arguing that the hobby’s accessibility barriers, such as complex licensing requirements and a lack of modern digital integration, deter younger tech enthusiasts. Online discussions have described it as a “dying relic” held back by “old-timers who resist change,” highlighting a disconnect between the hobby’s current image and the dynamic, open-source world that many tech followers inhabit.

Challenges in Addressing New Interests and Club Structure
Addressing the needs and interests of this younger, tech-oriented group poses a significant challenge for GCARC, requiring a thoughtful integration of their preferences into our Club’s structure without alienating our established members. Steve Stroh N8GNJ’s Zero Retries newsletter (zeroretries.substack.com) consistently follows this issue, researching and explaining new ideas, and his thoughts form the basis of many points in this article. Some of this difficulty lies in recognizing that younger users, accustomed to digital communication methods like texting and messaging apps, show little interest in the verbal aspects of ham radio that have long been central to the hobby, such as rag-chewing or repeater chats, preferring instead the efficiency and familiarity of text-based interaction.

This contrasts sharply with traditional hams for whom contesting or DXing are ends in themselves, driven by the thrill of the chase or social interaction. Importantly, our current approach of “selling” ham radio as a way to talk to distant stations or on local repeaters doesn’t resonate with a group who doesn’t want to talk at all. The traditional messaging approaches won’t work with this group.

Additionally, many of these new participants view radio not as an end in itself but as a “pipe” through which information reaches a user at a different location, prioritizing the data’s utility over the act of operating. This approach combines the radio function with a “data origination” function such as a sensor or camera and a “data consumption” function such as a display or processor. The radio gets connected to other components such as a Raspberry Pi computer and users need to have the same knowledge of the Pi as they do of the radio.

Radio plays the part of moving the data from one point to the other but it’s not the only component and it’s a means to an end, not the end in itself. This dichotomy is not easy to address.

Radio as a Data Pathway and Tech Saturday Opportunities
To bridge this gap, we must adapt our programming while preserving the core of what keeps our Club active. One practical approach is leveraging the distinct attendance patterns at our General Membership Meetings - largely attended by older hams interested in traditional topics - and our Tech Saturday Forums, which attract a smaller, technology-focused group. This separation allows us to tailor activities accordingly, ensuring both groups find value in GCARC’s offerings.

The concept of radio as a “pipe” for data movement, rather than an end goal, along with digital messaging replacing traditional voice communication, opens exciting possibilities for engaging non-ham tech followers and aligns with the innovative spirit of our Tech Saturday Forums. This perspective suggests that the value lies in what the radio transmits - data for education, science, or community use - rather than the operation itself.

To capitalize on this, we can explore several Tech Saturday Forum activities that showcase these capabilities, serving as examples from which we can draw actual sessions, with many other options available depending on member interest and resources. Additionally, cost remains a barrier for some prospective hams, so we’ll also consider sessions that address affordability :

• Packet Radio with DireWolf and APRS : Members could build a station using a Raspberry Pi and a low-cost HT to create and send APRS packets with environmental data, offering a hands-on introduction to data networking that could be replicated in STEM classes.
• Environmental Monitoring with Packet Radio : Building a station to monitor environmental data (e.g., air quality) using packet radio with DireWolf and APRS, offering a practical data-sharing project that could attract non-ham tech followers and support STEM outreach.
• WSPR for Science Experiments : Setting up a WSPR station with a temperature sensor and an HF rig to log climate data, providing an opportunity to experiment with weak signal propagation and share results with remote users, appealing to tech enthusiasts and students alike.
• DATV Using a Pluto SDR : Delving into digital ATV transmission and reception with a PlutoSDR (ADALM-PLUTO), utilizing its software-defined capabilities to experiment with video streaming, offering a cutting-edge project to engage tech-savvy participants.
• DigiPi Project : Constructing a DigiPi transceiver hotspot to support modes like Winlink and FT8, managed via a web interface, offering a versatile platform for data communication that could engage both members and non-ham tech followers.
• KA9Q-Radio Exploration : Diving into Phil Karn’s KA9Q-Radio software for SDR experimentation, allowing participants to explore digital modes and extend the software, fostering a collaborative, tech-driven environment. https://github.com/ka9q/ka9q-radio
• Firmware Upgrading and Testing of a TID Radio : Upgrading and testing firmware on a low-cost TIDRADIO (e.g., H3), providing an affordable entry point for prospective hams and an opportunity to experiment with software customization, addressing cost barriers while appealing to tech enthusiasts.
• Use of Text-Based Communication Tools such as JS8Call or VarAC : Exploring hybrid text-based messaging over radio using JS8Call (js8call.com) or VarAC (www.varac-hamradio.com), offering a practical way to engage with digital communication preferences and support emergency or educational data sharing.

These activities, tailored for the Tech Saturday Forum audience - typically a smaller group interested in newer technologies - complement the traditional focus of General Membership Meetings, creating a balanced approach that respects our heritage while inviting a new wave of participants into the Amateur Radio community. We’ll sort thru them in the coming months and will set up sessions for those that appear promising.

Return to Normal Format
This month’s letter may lack the usual event updates due to my absence and Field Day’s timing, but hopefully it provides some content for further discussion. I’ll be back in August with more hands-on news, returning to our standard format to highlight our ongoing projects and successes.

73 de Jon Pearce WB2MNF
​

Monday, July 21, 2025

Full Buck Moon - Thursday, July 10, 2025 @ 1637 Hours. At this time, the antlers of bucks (male deer) are in full growth mode. This Native American name was noted by Captain Jonathan Carver during his travels in the 1760s. Other animal-related names include Feather Moulting Moon (Cree) and Salmon Moon, a Tlingit term indicating when fish returned to the area and were harvested. As far as the plant world, there was Berry Moon (Anishinaabe), Moon When the Chokecherries are Ripe (Dakota), Month of the Ripe Corn Moon (Cherokee), and Raspberry Moon (Algonquin, Ojibwe), among others. Thunder Moon (Western Abenaki) and Halfway Summer Moon (Anishinaabe) are other variants. Old Farmer’s Almanac - www.almanac.com