ARLA/CLUSTER: O termo "Amador de Rádio" continua a ser relevante.?

[João Gonçalves Costa]

Is the term 'Amateur Radio' still relevant?
Gary Hammond, ZL3GH wonders if Amateur Radio will evolve into an Amateur Communications hobby.

Our hobby most definitely started out as a 'radio' hobby. There were incredible new horizons to be explored, records to be broken. Radio has played a part in times of great endeavours and times of great sorrow. Radio has played a huge part in our hobby over the years and the emphasis was correctly placed on knowledge of radio theory and how it could be applied.

There was a day many years ago when the first electrical based communications was developed. One of the first was the telegraph system thats primary use was to communicate over long distances.

Following this was the telephone which was another means of communications. What radio did, was to liberate the owners of these expensive and high maintenance communication systems. More importantly, it enabled the users to experience the ability to communicate at different locations not bound by the wired system.

Ships at sea was one of the obvious applications of this new found ability.

During war time, radio played major roles right across the spectrum from submarine communications to radars. Amateur radio enthusiasts can be found in all of the stories of these endeavours.

Over the last 30 years, computers have increasing played a role in our hobby. From the very early days of recording logs to the sophisticated embedded computers in all modern communications equipment. Various modulation schemes and new methods of digital communications would not be possible without the computing power that we take for granted today. However the ability to harness computing power for use in our hobby has never been taken seriously as a requirement for entry into the hobby.

We are now at a crossroads where the underlying mechanism for communicating can be such a hybrid of wired and wireless that the two have blurred seamlessly to point where the average consumer using a cell phone would not even consider that they are actually using a sophisticated computer controlled radio. It is no wonder that radio has lost its 'mystique'. 

Even tasks that were the domain of electronic hardware is now being superseded by software algorithms coded inside sophisticated DSP's. The IF stage of many modern radios are now the domains of these DSP's and of course there are SDR's that are gaining acceptance.

Perhaps we are evolving (or need to evolve) into an 'Amateur Communications' hobby where the radio plays a part in the larger communications system. The emphasis on 'Radio' may not be as relevant as it used to be and as a group, we need to evolve along with the technology which is something that 'hams' have done in previous decades. This does not mean that the requirements for understanding the basic principles of radio based communications is not required. It certainly is! However the emphasis on the way the radio is integrated into the overall communications system has been overlooked and we need to address this sooner rather than later. It's the novel ways that radios can be integrated into other forms that will stir the imaginations of the young and the frontiers lie.

Even now, the traditional communications model of the large telecommunications companies is being challenged with more and more of today's generation moving away from fixed wired communications in their home to a wireless environment. With the commoditisation of radio to the stage it is today, it is no wonder that radio no longer is perceived as the new frontier. We as a hobby need to change our focus and embrace new and exciting ways to communicate, and even dare I say, actually lead the way as the generations before us have done.

The questions are is 'radio' really the reason we are here, or is it about the ability to 'communicate' and as a hobby, where do we go from here?

Gary Hammond, ZL3GH.