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Is Your Ham Radio Club a General Purpose or Specialty Club?

Scot, K9JY — Sat, 08 May 2010 02:44:22 +0000

Ham radio clubs are often thought of as the bedrock of amateur radio. As one who has both criticized ham radio clubs as well as made suggestions for helping improve them, I want to take some time to talk through what makes a great ham radio club.

The very first decision that needs making when forming a club is this one: do you want your club to be a general purpose club or a specialty club?

Some definitions

General purpose radio clubs are those clubs that want ham radio operators from the many different subsections of the overall hobby. You want to attract DX’ers, contesters, VHF enthusiasts, rag chewers, digital enthusiasts, builders, CW operators, SSTV types and people who love to work satellites and bounce signals off the Moon. QRP and QRO. Public service and emergency communications.

Specialty clubs, on the other hand, want to focus on one specific area of the hobby. The DX club. The contesting club. The repeater club. The digital club.

The very first thing you need to do is decide what type of club you want to be. These different types of clubs are managed differently, promote themselves differently and approach club membership differently.

Now, if you are not in a large enough area to support specialty clubs, you may by default need to be a general purpose radio club so that ten people can get together as a club. That’s just fine, but you need to then manage the club as a general purpose club and not a specialty club that happens to have three other people in it.

And for established clubs, you need to periodically take a hard look at what type of club you actually are and not what your mission statement says you are. Is your entire club now consisting of DX’ers and Contesting? Maybe you should split in two – or focus on getting other hams with more diverse interests involved in your club.

Your club can be a general purpose club or a specialty club, but not both.

Ham radio clubs are managed differently based on type

If you are a specialty club, you can focus on that one specialty. DX clubs don’t care much about SSTV. And contesting clubs don’t care much about rag chewing or how to do keyboard to keyboard packet. It’s not what they are about.

General purpose clubs, on the other hand, have to work a relatively delicate balance that promotes all the different aspects of the hobby without concentrating on one specific part of the hobby. That diversity is reflected in how you run the meetings, what programs you bring in and the events that you hold. As soon as a general purpose club starts to focus too much on one particular area of ham radio, you start to lose those not in that particular part of ham radio.

Each type of ham radio club has a strength that matches their weakness

The strength of a specialty club is that the club can focus exclusively on that specialty. But that strength is matched by the fact that a specialty club focuses on that one area of ham radio.

Take DXing, for instance. At a sunspot high, DX is fabulous. Ten watts on ten meters and the world is your oyster and new countries are pearls for the taking. But at a sunspot low, not so much. The high bands never open, the power, space and antennas needed to work DX on the low bands put most everyone at a disadvantage not to mention that low band DXing is best done at night. Easy membership now wanes, the club becomes smaller and the enthusiasm changes. That needs management.

A general purpose club, on the other hand, promotes all parts of ham radio. It doesn’t matter what is hot at the moment, the general purpose club is agile enough to move to whatever is hot at the moment. It can promote different parts of the hobby and others in the club can learn about new areas of ham radio. But the diversity of the topics mean not every topic will be interesting to everyone all of the time. That balance between helping hams learn about different parts of the hobby while not focusing on one area is the disadvantage general purpose clubs provide.

Decide what type of ham radio club you want to be

If you are forming a club, figure out what type of club you want to be. And if you are an existing club, take a hard look at least once a year to determine if you are really still a specialty club or if you are really still a general purpose club. Once you start being something you are not, a slippery slope–attracting and retaining members, budgets, dues, and conflict in the club–is not far behind.

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Ham radio web sites need improved marketing

Scot, K9JY — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:27:23 +0000

Atlanta Radio Club Banner by The Rocketeer

When I moved to Seattle from Illinois, I wanted to join a ham radio club. Great — I hit the Internet and started looking. Once I found a club that I thought I would like, I tried to get directions to where the club meeting was located. Google maps was tough — the address information on the web site was incomplete. I found it — after arriving in the general area and looking for 20-minutes.

Fast forward. I move to a new state this last December, new city — look for a ham radio club where I can hang out. You’d think I’d have an easier time in this city. After all, I used to be the President of this club. Alas, they have moved their meeting location — not unexpected after all this time.

Armed with my GPS device and the address, sans zip code, I get to the strip mall where the club meeting is held. It’s dark. I drive up and down the strip mall: nothing. I get out of my car and walk the strip mall: nothing. Nada. Can’t find it.

It turns out it is a simple door where you go in and that, apparently, opens up into some space where meetings are held. I don’t know; after 15-minutes of looking, I give up.

FAIL.

Now, I’m picking on these two clubs. But you know what? Most ham radio web sites suck when it comes to marketing the club to hams in the city or people visiting the site.

And don’t even get me going on those Saturday morning breakfast meetings — all located at the XYZ Restaurant. Great. Except now I have to go look up the restaurant on Google, get an address, hope that when I get to the restaurant I’ll be able to find this little group that meets here on Saturdays. Is it too much to ask to put the directions in one place so you don’t make your potential new club members go through hoops to find you?

Do you want to use your ham radio web site to actually ATTRACT hams to your club?

Here are some suggestions.

Adequate directions

What are adequate directions? Well, if you can’t embed a Google map with directions to your site, you at least need the complete address. Complete, as in address, city, state and zip code. Almost no one puts in the zip code — but the zip code is what really differentiates the address for maps from Google and Yahoo! and others.

123 Main Street, Kansas City doesn’t cut it. Seriously. 123 Main Street, Suite 120, Kansas City, MO 66101 is the right address.

But you know what? Ham radio clubs meet in mysterious places inside buildings. Places like basements, or conference rooms — or houses. You need to tell inquisitive hams who might want to join your club exactly how to find the meeting place. If it is a simple doorway with small lettering on top in the middle of a construction zone, you should put that on web site.

If you are a ham in a new town looking to find your meeting place, how hard are you making it to find you? You know what? Most instances…hard.

Contact Information

Please contact any of our Board Members….but there is no contact information provided. No e-mail addresses, no contact form on the web site…nothing.

Even if you wanted to contact someone in the club, it is hard. It shouldn’t be hard if you really want members to join.

There are a tremendous number of non-spam contact forms that you can use to have people send you inquiries about the club. But saying to contact any Board Member about the club with no contact information isn’t it.

Focus of the club

If you deal with government for your antennas, government officials — if they are not familiar with the multitude of services ham radio provides — will go search for ham radio and the city they are serving. Or, if you are a neighbor of a ham and want to find out about that strange thing you do for a hobby and hit Google to find out about ham radio, the search result will be…? Your club will be one of the first things you find.

And what does this public official or your neighbor see hitting the home page? Blech.

A generic mission statement. Or worse. From my targeted club’s first paragraph on the home page:

The Club is based in southern (state). Our members enjoy all aspects of amateur radio including: DX, CW, VHF, UHF, Packet, other digital modes and many other forms of amateur radio.

Unless noted otherwise below, the club meets at 7:30pm on the Third Tuesday of each month at (place), 2300 S Park Street in the Villager Mall.

(This club) sponsors HF events, DX, contests, monthly meetings with programs and weekly nets.

Inspiring, isn’t it? Makes you want to vote to have an exception to rules on the planning commission for your tower, doesn’t it?

It IS the world wide web. Let’s get what the ham radio benefits are to the community right up front so that people searching the site get the benefits of ham radio. Not a bunch of acronyms and generic mission statements.

The rule is this: a city council member would read it and it would help them decide in favor of a tower. Or the public would read it and decide that…”oh, these people are not nuts; they do good things for the community.”

Pictures of a fun, approachable group

You know what? We look like a bunch of…well, you know what we look like. Most of the “pictures of Field Day” depict a group of people we would never intend on becoming friends with, much less attend a meeting. Boring looking, we are.

Let’s get some pictures up of a group of people engaged, enjoying what they do and who are approachable for hams and others in the community.

Of course, if you are not a fun, approachable group, you have other issues; but that is for another article another day…

Your club programs

You know what? If you have a responsible Board of Directors, the first board meeting should have a list of programs and tentative dates. If you don’t, you don’t have a good Board of Directors.

On the web site? You can’t list the program as “Fred, W9ABC, will talk about PSK31.” Nobody gets that except ham radio operators.

You need to describe what PSK — you know…phased shift keying — is, what Fred will present and what a cool program it will be for the group. Who thinks PSK31 is fun? Well, it is — but no one puts why that is on the web site about the program.

A members area

You want to put all that cool newsletter, Field Day pictures and club meeting minutes on the web site? You should — in a members only area.

The objective of the club web site is twofold: attract new members and serve current members. Above is the marketing to attract new members and show the benefits of ham radio to people who can influence or control our ability to practice our hobby.

The members area — user name and password controlled — is for member services in the club. Here is where you should have your meeting minutes. Here is where you have the dull and boring to anyone but a member pictures of Field Day. Here is where you have the newsletters that support your members and the club.

And a forum area. Yes, you can set up an e-mail reflector for the club, but you can also set up a forum area just for members. A little exclusivity, easy access — but don’t pay your dues and the access goes away.

It is about marketing ham radio

Look, a web site is about marketing ham radio to people who are either not hams or are hams and are looking for a place to provide support through a club.

We turn it into this place where nothing is focused, nothing is clear and the only people who could possibly understand what is going on in the web site are half the current members of the club.

Get a marketing face for the club as what is shown to everyone to attract members and support the hobby.

Get a private area for members to support the members of the club so that they stay and contribute to the club’s well-being.

Let’s get the club web sites to help the ham radio cause and serve our members. Not a mish-mash of who-knows-what begging to get dismissed.

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Working through the doldrums of a passionate Amateur Radio operator

Scot, K9JY — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:00:58 +0000

One of the great things about amateur radio is that there are so many different aspects to the hobby. One can spend years on DX’ing only to become enamored with VHF and then move on to some digital mode.

It’s all learning.

But sometimes, there is simply a lull. A period of time where not much happens. I’ve been through that time here; not much has been posted for several weeks. Most of it is the day job…some stuff that is very exciting is happening and there is even better stuff coming up. But, have all of that going on and then switch to a Mac from Windows for work and your hobby and you don’t have a lot of time to get back into serious hobby work.

I’m trying to get the Mac to talk to my radio through my microHAM interface. I’ve looked at a couple different programs. I’ve tried to make it work. But what I have done is spend a half hour on it and then said…no, more important stuff to do on the day job, so go do it. I’ve asked for some help — and have gotten it. More on that later. But I haven’t had time to do the serious work to get everything working.

In other words, a poor attempt to get stuff set up that doesn’t represent the passion of the hobby. It happens.

Does that mean the hobby doesn’t mean as much to me? Nope. It just means that a hobby is a hobby and sometimes the hobby doesn’t count as much as that which earns you a living.

I need to respect that. And I do. But I feel guilty about it anyway. Wouldn’t you?

Oh…and doesn’t the site’s new look just rock?

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How to learn from every ham radio contest

Scot, K9JY — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:01:29 +0000

When taking notes at the end of the contest — what went well and what could have been better — what should you consider for inclusion?

Here’s a short trigger list for what you can learn from every contest:

Equipment

Radio working properly
Amplifier working properly
Keyer working properly
Computer issues
Contesting software issues
Interface issues
Rotor box issues

Antennas

Each antenna, each band notes
Directional weakness and strengths
Listening antenna performance
Feedline issues

Contest Performance

Right band, right time
Right frequency for the band
Missed band openings
Propagation challenges
Performed handling runs well
Performed S&P well

Support Performance

Meal breaks
Forced time off at right times?
Completed contest submission on time

Once you have all of your notes, you build a to-do list for the next contest and start to complete those items.

This is a great way to continuously improve your contesting skills while learning your station’s strengths and weaknesses. This also helps you see your improvements in your contesting and that provides further motivation to improve.

Any other items that help us learn from every contest?

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CW Skimmer Wins Dayton Hamvention Pileup Contest

Scot, K9JY — Thu, 28 May 2009 03:25:54 +0000

The Kansas City DX Club Pileup Contest is an annual bragging rights event for the serious CW operator in ham radio. This year’s contest offered up a bit of a different competitor — CW Skimmer, that often maligned software program that attempts to copy Morse code using digital dits and dahs wrapped in binary computer code. Since Morse code and computer code are both binary in nature, you’d think our computer binary friends would get along well. And they did.

The big 2009 winner of the Kansas City DX Club was Skimmer, with 61 accurate calls counted in the pileup contest, besting the number one human form of VE3DZ with 51 accurate calls.

Skimmer is still controversial in contesting circles. But a tool like that in a DX pileup is a cool thing to have. Even in contests.

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Multi-operator contesting teams and sleep deprivation

Scot, K9JY — Mon, 04 May 2009 08:00:27 +0000

Sleep deprivation also impacts the productivity and performance of teams. This, from Bob Sutton, in Sleep Deprivation and Group Performance. While the point of view of sleep deprivation is on business teams, I think it directly applies to ham radio multi-operator contesting teams as well. Especially those that have not operated together often enough to bond as a team.

Not much research has been done on sleep deprivation and teams, so the article he cites is both ground-breaking and needs more confirmation. The article is not linked (it’s an academic article, so I don’t think it is on-line…), but the basic points are these:

The individual impact of sleep deprivation — “reduced ability to process information, reduced ability to learn and perform novel tasks, irritability, and impatience” — disrupt team performance as well.
If the team is set up as a hierarchy, overcoming the leader’s errors is very difficult.
“…when people on a team are sleep deprived — regardless of their personalities — the resulting irritability and grumpiness is likely (regardless of personality) to cause the kind of nasty interpersonal conflict associated with poor performance and decision-making”

If you have operated on a multi-operator contesting team, even a team of two in the middle of a Saturday night of contesting, you’ve seen these effects in play.

Has sleep deprivation distrupted your multi-op team?

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What Ham Radio talking points need

Scot, K9JY — Fri, 01 May 2009 08:00:12 +0000

Ham radio is a diverse hobby. It’s a technical, engineering, builder, emergency service hobby. But ask most people about ham radio and you get stories of RF interference or a puzzled look followed by a question about 1950. I mean, the Internet obliterated ham radio, didn’t it?

Over at Innismir.net, there is a great dissection of a traditional media article on ham radio from Michigan. And the article isn’t bad. But the end of the post notes this:

Any press is good press they say and getting the hobby out to the general public is a good thing, so props to the Midland ARC for getting coverage and getting a few juicy tidbits out there. However, we, as a hobby, need to work on some talking points on some of the more “exciting” points of Ham Radio. We also apparently need to work on our comparisons.

So what should our talking points be to the traditional media? Here’s a few suggestions:

Ham radio embraces many interests

If we’re a diverse hobby, it should be an advantage. If you are an engineer, you can design antennas, stations or software. If you are a builder, there are kits. If you like the outdoors, you can take radio with you. If you like competition, we have contests. If you like public service, we have it in spades.

The great thing about a diverse hobby is that if you get tired of one thing (DXing, for example), you can learn about a whole different thing (say digital modes) while still staying within the hobby. It’s not like you love trains, then get disinterested, leave your club and friends there, and start over so you can try out planes. Nope. You just start working in this new area.

Ham radio helps the public

While this is the traditional public service message we have, we need to mix in much more of what we have done to advance emergency work. We have an imbedded methodology through ARES that gives us a good process. We have practice sessions to support local emergency teams. We have built digital communications to improve our work with emergency providers. And, yes, when all else fails, we can still get through because of our multiple frequency antennas.

Whether it is Katrina or the Space Shuttle or the local walk for charity, ham radio operators perform in their role of supporting emergency communications and public service.

Ham radio is fun

Sorry, I’m not into something for the drudgery. The numbing going forward of work on stuff that doesn’t even remotely excite me. Whether it is the friendships you develop over time and on the air or investigating a new part of the hobby or meeting up with your buddies in the ham radio club, ham radio is fun. As soon as it isn’t fun, it’s time to try something else in the hobby…because we have a diverse hobby.

What else? What do you think our talking points need when that microphone gets pointed at us for some answers?

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Ham radio Photo DXpeditions

Scot, K9JY — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:00:42 +0000

Crossing my e-mail was a note that Svalbard (JW) shore operations were approved for July 4th and July 14th of this year. You may work this short operation with radios, vertical antennas and less than a 100-watts. But, that’s not why you should pay attention to this operation.

It is the photography

Breathtaking is the best way to describe the photos that come out of these trips. Whether it is photos of penguins, glaciers, polar bears or other fabulous scenery, these trips will knock your socks off.

Oh, and by the way, ham radio is an integral part of these trips where there are shore stops to operate ham radio.

You can find out about these great trips from the Photo DXpedition website. And the pictures? Here’s a sample of how close you get to the scenery:

Photo DXpeditions

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Ham radio contesting Wiki site

Scot, K9JY — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 08:00:23 +0000

Ham radio contesting has lots of information in many different places — including the most popular articles here on K9JY.com — 30 days, 30 contesting tips. Pete, N4ZR, has spearheaded the creation of a Wiki site devoted to contesting called the Contesting Compendium. The idea for ham radio contesting is to have a single site to point to that will help new and experienced contesters.

A quick look at the table of contents shows a great start:

Ham radio contest operating

This section is devoted to everything operational. Sections are already up on contesting from a city lot, 40-meters, SO2R and my favorite – A sleep strategy for DX Contests.

Ham radio contest technology

Technology for contesting is broad and specific at the same time. Already up are articles on Contest logging software and CW Skimmer with more to come. This one has a potential to grow to monstrous size.

Ham radio station design

How you design a station for contest operations is different than design for DXing or casual operating. This section reflects that design. My favorite? Tours of Famous Contest Stations. And, no, my station isn’t included in the tours…

Ham radio towers and antennas

Antennas for contesting are different than for other modes of operating. Sure, you can contest with a dipole and vertical antennas (and there are many instances in contests where these types of antennas are superior), but contesting requires a broader perspective for which antennas are right for different contests.

Ham radio contest propagation

Let’s just say that you can learn more about ham radio propagation working a single band in a 48-hour contest than you will with months of on and off operating on the band. String a few of those together and you can really sense the difference in propagation without the numbers.

And many more

This is a work in progress from the contesting community. So bookmark the site and check it often (no RSS feeds?) as there are some good contributions there already with more coming.

Props to Pete, N4ZR, for doing this. It’s no small job.

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Ham Radio Sunspot Saturday — April 25, 2009

Scot, K9JY — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 17:15:39 +0000

NOT!

by DJMcCrady

Reversed polarity from this sunspot signaled the start of a new sunspot cycle. It just hasn’t come back very fast. Given the fact that I have a great vertical — with half the signal going into the side of the hill from my QTH — I need a bit more than hope out of the sun to get some signals here.

Patiently waiting…

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