Our thinking
Heckington and District Radio Group has been in existence for less than a year. It already has approaching 200 social media members and over 40 full members (5th August 2024). Not bad for a radio group based in a village in rural Lincs! But why did we set it up, what was our thinking and what do we hope to achieve for the group and the hobby?
Hobbies are in decline, aren’t they?
Yes. Hobbies and hobby clubs of all kinds are struggling as the generation that created them ages. While there are innovators around, established groups tend to be rather dominated by traditional thinkers. Traditional thinking doesn’t always produce the answers to modern problems. To the younger, instant gratification generation, for example, traditional hobbies may seem all but irrelevant.
Most hobby radio groups have grasped social media and set up pages on Facebook and other platforms. But while social media can be a great resource, under-moderated pages give a platform to negative, as well as more positive voices. The trouble is that negative voices always shout the loudest.
How many times have you seen a question from a newbie met with derision or posts like “CB is dead”, “Amateur Radio is dying” or “FT8 is killing radio”? Radio pages don’t always present a very positive image. Would they encourage you to join the hobby?
Why is it so difficult to sell amateur radio to the public?
One of the problems is the way that amateur radio is structured. Imbed a hierarchy, based on ‘classes’ of license and you are building-in division and elitism. Tell people that to even try a hobby, let alone join it, they must sit a course and pass an exam, and most of them nowadays will look at you as if you are bonkers.
Times and people’s expectations have changed, while amateur radio tends to be regarded, whether fairly or not, as stuck in the past – a hobby for geeky old men in garden sheds. We want to change that image. But it’s difficult when, to be fair, quite a few of us are geeky old men in garden sheds!
Radio has so much to offer!
It does. We know the potential benefits that a social activity like hobby radio can bring, both to individuals of all ages and to society as a whole. Radio brings us together. Pick up a microphone and you can be talking across cultures, classes and international barriers, to people who you might otherwise consider to be on the other side of one divide or another.
On an individual level, radio brings people out from behind isolating computer screens and gets them talking. Radio is good for your mental health. It gets you thinking and learning. It makes you new friends. There must be thousands of people out there who would benefit from hobby radio. If only we could put a microphone in their hands and convince them to try it…
Why ‘hobby radio’ rather than ‘amateur radio’?
Not all of those who use radio communications as a leisure activity are licensed radio amateurs. There are two bands (CB and PMMR446) in the UK that people can use without a licence. The advantage is that people can pick up a radio and use these bands straight away. What a great way to introduce people to the hobby!
And yet the RSGB, amateur radio’s representative body, and rather too many amateur radio clubs tend, at best, to ignore these bands and tolerate their users rather than positively include them. The prevailing view, in places, seems to be that amateur radio is something else and that radio amateurs are, in some way, better. There is, within amateur radio, a certain amount of radio snobbery which looks down on CB and PMR446 users as though they are a ‘lower class’ of radio user. Which is odd, given that many amateurs use all three.
Worse, this view fails to exploit the potential of these bands as a proving ground for the next generation of radio amateur. Given that amateur radio has been in decline for decades, this is both frustrating and counterproductive.
When you couple this with the fact that the public has long since forgotten about CB Radio and mostly think of PMR446, if they have even heard of it, as a system for children to play with walkie-talkies, bringing radio to a wider audience becomes a seemingly insurmountable challenge. But is it?
Starting a new club
The traditional way to start a radio club is to cater for one group or the other – CB or Amateur Radio. But, if you want to introduce new people to the hobby, it helps to think about ‘hobby radio’ in its entirety, rather than limit your potential audience to one or the other. At the end of the day, radio hobbyists are radio hobbyists. If you lose the snobbery, it really isn’t difficult to include everyone and there are several advantages to doing so.
Where to begin?
If you want to attract people who have never used radio before or not used it for a very long time, the place to start is probably not amateur radio, with its barriers to entry. People want to try it straight away. Not after they have studied and sat an exam – that may come later for some. The obvious place to start is CB and PMR446 as both these bands are immediately accessible to everyone.
Radio for all
That’s our motto at H&DRG and we mean it. Radio is a resource that should be available to the whole community, not just those who can, or want to study and pass an exam. If we want hobby radio to thrive, then we need to work to remove barriers not erect them. Promoting CB and PMR446, as the entry point is one way to do it. Everyone can do CB and PMR446. They are a much easier sell to the general public.
Does CB Radio and 27MHz fit the bill?
If you’re wanting to raise the profile of hobby radio then CB certainly has some advantages. People of a certain age often remember the CB craze of the 1970s and 80s very fondly. There is nothing like a bit of nostalgia to get people fired up.
But the 27MHz band has its limitations. It isn’t the most effective band for local communications (say, up to 10 miles, which in a rural community like Heckington, is the requirement). Handheld radios are very short range and homebase and mobile installations require big antennas. That’s OK for enthusiasts but it doesn’t really fit the bill in the modern world. Who really wants a 18 foot silver rod on their chimney stack? Well, alright, you might, and I might but let’s be realistic – Mr and Mrs Jones in the bungalow down the road probably don’t.
What about PMR446?
446MHz is a much more viable band for communications at the required range. Antennas are smaller and handhelds have much better range. However, the PMR446 allocation in the UK, with its power and other restrictions, has its own limitations.
The elephant in the radio shack
Listening around the 446 band, it is evident that the use of 4w handhelds and mobile radios is fast becoming the norm, whatever the regulatory intentions were for this band when it was introduced. It is also apparent that there are lots of radio amateurs on the band, working around the restrictions. OFCOM shows no sign of enforcing them and it is not difficult to understand why. Providing no more than a few watts are used, neither interference nor any nuisance is likely to be caused to other spectrum users, especially in rural or semi-rural locations. We think the restrictions are unnecessary and we’d like to see them lifted.
Promoting PMR446 is the way to go!
The flood of imported handheld radios (like the Quansheng K5), capable of operation at a few watts on the 446MHz band, and their low price point (around £20) creates an excellent opportunity to introduce viable, local radio communications to a new generation of hobby radio users in smaller communities like Heckington. So, while we make the regulatory position clear to newcomers, and highlight the need to avoid interference to other users, we leave it to them to decide which equipment they use. We are each responsible for our own radio use and we urge everyone who uses radio to behave responsibly and to be respectful to other users at all times.
Is promoting CB and PMR446 enough on its own?
It’s a start. Adopting CB and PMR446 for our daily chat and twice weekly nets creates the potential for people to take part straight away. That has proved a big plus and we’ve brought lots of new people into the hobby that way. But there’s another barrier.
People, nowadays, are reluctant to commit to spending their hard-earned cash on unfamiliar equipment before experiencing the benefits for themselves. Hardly surprising, given the cost-of-living crisis. Cost was a barrier we needed to remove if we were going to introduce radio to the widest possible audience.
It is a tradition, in amateur radio that experienced users will often lend equipment to new users. That’s how I started in radio, and it is probably how many of you started too.
Can we do this on a bigger scale?
Doing this on a bigger scale means building a stock of radios and other equipment that people can borrow, free of charge. Imagine a hobby radio group which you can join, borrow a radio, take it home, switch it on and join a net all on the same day! We’re proud to be able to say that in this part of the country, at least, that club is H&DRG.
But people will take advantage
Conventional wisdom will tell you that you can’t do things like this. Of course, there are always people who will take advantage but, if you always take the negative view, it will always hold you back. If you accept that there may be losses in any such loan scheme and build them into your planning, then such a scheme becomes workable.
Radios don’t grow on trees!
Conventional wisdom will also tell you that unless you’re going to charge significant membership fees, you’ll never raise the money necessary to cover a club’s running costs, let alone fund such a loan scheme. But charge significant fees and you’ll probably never attract the necessary members. It’s a vicious circle, requiring small organisations like radio groups to think a bit differently.
We charge no membership fees at all.
So, where does the money come from?
Our first step was to join our local council’s lottery scheme. Tickets are £1, 50p of which comes to us. Entrants are in with a chance of winning £25k. What’s not to like about that? We aim to raise around £500 this year from our lottery.
Having explained our vision to the local Council and the benefits we believe that radio can bring to people in communities like ours, we were put in touch with the Sleaford Community Power Fund – run by a local power company – and applied for a grant. We were awarded £1000.
We’re also working with the Lincolnshire Co-op and are due to receive a further grant from them early next year.
We’ve just ordered our second big batch of radios for our loan scheme.
We have only just begun
We have already introduced a number of people to hobby radio through our loan scheme. All of them were on the air on the day we supplied their kit, at no cost to them. The majority have gone on to buy their own equipment and several have, with our help, obtained or are studying for their amateur radio licence. Their stories and the difference that discovering radio has made to them inspires us to want to do more.
What could possibly go wrong?
Clubs often do go wrong, let’s face it. They tend to put demands on people’s time and have their own hierarchies which can both cause problems. Egos get in the way, leading to division and power struggles. How many clubs and other small organisations have you seen go this way?
Taking a positive approach that includes everyone
To to give us a chance of avoiding these problems and stay positive, we: –
- Call and consider ourselves to be a friendly ‘group’, rather than a ‘club’
- Are clear with everyone about our vision and values and reiterate them frequently
- Welcome everyone with an interest in hobby radio
- Focus our efforts on bringing new people into the hobby and supporting them once they join
- Value everyone, regardless of their skills and experience, and whether or not they hold a licence
- Include everyone – we have weekly nets on the PMR446, CB and the Amateur radio bands so that everyone can take part
- Avoid radio snobbery
- Keep our structure as flat as possible and rarely use our committee titles – a committee is necessary to get things done. Committee members simply help to administer the organisation because somebody has to
- Avoid putting pressure on each other to take part in group activities and tasks (clubs can be a real drag when they expect and demand too much of their members)
- Our members do what they want for the group, when they want and are not required to do anything at all if they prefer
- Don’t shy away from robustly moderating our Facebook page
- Delete comments that are negative or discouraging to other members and newcomers
- Operate a ‘two strikes and you’re out’ approach on Facebook – people either support our ethos or they don’t. If they don’t, we’re not going to argue about it
- Focus on the things that we have in common and that bring us together, rather than on negativity and division.
We’re not saying that we have got it completely right and we certainly don’t have all the answers. But, in our little corner of Lincolnshire, we’re trying, positively, to make a difference and, so far, we’ve had some success.
Here’s to the future and further successes to come!