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Comment by chefandy | Hacker News Reader

> I don't think there's anything to get - it's just for fun. It started as an AARL one-off for the 110th anniversary of the establishment of national parks in the US, and proved popular, and turned into its own thing.

> I think if you look at things like Niantic it's a similar two-for-one appeal: a motivating excuse to go someplace you would like to go but might not have otherwise gone and engaging in activity you like.

I believe the GP is saying that it doesn't say what "it" is. AARL and Niantic aren't exactly household names outside of people already interested in radio.

If they're trying to attract new people to amateur radio with this as floatrock surmised, (and maybe they're not! and if not, maybe they should be?), you need to assume this is going to be people's first point of contact... and this website isn't particularly useful for that use case.

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It really should say what it is about. Go the park, setup radio, and communicate with other amateur operators. It doesn't even mention activating parks which at least ham operators would understand.

I think there is assumption that visitor would know what Summits on the Air is since that is better known.

Thanks! I looked at their website for a while and read most of the other comments in this thread- and still had no idea what this was about. I would expect them to have something like your second sentence on the top of their page.

I think one of the big problems with the ham scene is, ironically, communication. If you search the internet for information about using ham radio, the loudest voices are sour, cantankerous forum dwellers for whom unwanted clandestine vigilante radio regulation enforcement and compliance are the most interesting part of amateur radio. Good luck if you don't already know how taboo Baofeng, et al radios are before you write your first post. That's not appealing to most people. In fact, most find that sort of personality repulsive. Who wants to ask a question somewhere about a new interest if you're nearly guaranteed to elicit a condescending non-answer from someone more interested in making themselves feel smart than they are at being a good resource?

Communication isn't just putting the information out there, it's about sharing the good feelings people get from doing ham stuff. If there's a charismatic amateur radio youtuber or something that's way more about the joy of using radio rather than the nitpicky details even experienced hams find tiring, I haven't encountered them. They probably need to do some serious promotion. Lot's of old farts like to think young people just aren't technical enough or don't have the discipline: it's bullshit. Compare how many technical workers there are today vs 40 years ago. I'll bet 90% of what repels new hopeful hams from getting involved boils down to the curse of expertise, gatekeeping, and angry hall-monitorism among the most vocal people that haunt places that new folks might go for information. It's not just amateur radio that does this, but it might be the biggest offender I've seen at least since the Perl newsgroups in the late 90s.

I would be into ragchewing except (at least on 20/40/80 where I have a consistent setup) the vast majority of SSB contacts are with ancient men and most conversations I catch contain unambiguously racist statements or at least a lot of "kids these days" talk. I don't care that they're having those conversations, I just have no interest in talking to them.

For sure. It definitely lends a chicken/egg component to it. That problem can't get better without more people involved but more people aren't likely to get involved because of that problem.

> Niantic

The slightly funny thing here for me is that Niantic has nothing to do with radio at all! They made Pokémon GO, the augmented reality "find Pokémon in the real world" app that was pretty popular a few years ago :D

Ha! I was like "Ok whatever that shit is"

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