Lost Art of Communication?

Flipping through the May, 2011 issue of QST I come across the ‘Correspondence’ column where hams send in their opinions on a variety of amateur radio subjects. One in particulate caught my eye from Wallace, W7UUO titled, ‘A Lost Art.’ In his opinion over the years he has been licensed the “art” of communicating has been lost. These days instead of gaining pleasure out of communicating, better known as “rag chewing” it seems to be airwaves dominated by signal reports.

I understand and respect his point of view as a long time amateur. Times have changed in 50 years of amateur radio, but the main purpose for radio remains the same…communication. I look at it from another perspective and I believe I have written about this previously. In a world of hustle and bustle, I don’t get the luxury to spend hours a day in the shack meeting other like minded hams over the airwaves.

While my opinion might change as I get older, when my son grows up, moves out, gets married and more importantly, I retire. Right now I am more interested the quantity of contacts, one reason I enjoy contesting. As a relative newcomers to HF, I am excited to work new DXCC entities in nearly every contest I enter.

There have been times in the past I have enjoyed good conversations with other hams. I can recall operating as K6B last year, celebrating the NCCC’s 40th anniversary and Donald, K6ILG contacted me and we talked for about 30 minutes. This while operating a special event station, but nonetheless I took the time to slow things down and have a long rag chew. What made this more unique, Don was only about 2 miles away in my city.

So while a rag chew is not the most important aspect for me, I do enjoy meeting and talking with other amateur operators. For me, it’s all about available time, since I don’t have much being able to put in an hour or two over the course of a contest weekend could end up netting me quite a few QSOs.

Unfortunately, a digital mode like PSK31 (and RTTY in some respect) allows for the heavy use of macros, which potentially kills a worthwhile QSO. Rarely do I ever use macros when working either mode. Even at that I have responded to a CQ call with a personalized response and end up getting a macro reply. Maybe that’s the way some modes are going. Regardless, each operator has their own interest(s) when it comes to amateur radio, for some it’s the rag chew, for others contesting and there is a world of radio in between.