DE Dan KB6NU: How do we promote better operating practices? A lament that I often hear is that many amateur radio operators either dont seem to understand the importance of good operating practices or just dont care about them. Just this morning, a reader sent me an e-mail saying, I think there are too many hams out there that dont how to call a station on split frequency. Its amazing that we have so many dummies out there. I wrote back, saying, Maybe we need another type of Official Observer, called the Operating Observer. This group would note when operators arent following good operating procedures and send people gentle reminders. Of course, as soon as I hit Send, I knew this wasnt a very good idea. As my reader noted, this would be a thankless job, and chances are the poor operators would simply ignore the notices, anyway. Even so, there must be some way to encourage good operating procedures. One effort to promote better operating procedures is the DX Code of Conduct (dx-code.org/). This is a list of 13 suggestions to make DX operation, particularly pileups, less chaotic. The website includes a small image that youre supposed to post to your website to show that you support the Code. While this is certainly a step in the right direction, I wish there was something that we could do to be more proactive in improving operating practices. There is, of course, the ARRL Operating Manual. This publication is now is in its tenth edition and is a valuable source of information about how to operate properly. The problem is only a fraction of the amateur radio operators on the air have a copy, much less read it. Another attempt at promoting good operating practice is the ARRLs A-1 Operators Club (arrl.org/a-1-op). While a noble effort, I think that this program really requires more promotion. In addition to being more aggressive about finding A-1 operators and bringing them into this club, the ARRL should use it to promote better operation. Perhaps a series of videos with the A-1 Ops logo showing how to operate split or how to properly call CQ would help improve operating practices overall. Talking about videos, Id be surprised if there werent already some YouTube videos that illustrate good operating practices. If you know of any, please e-mail me. It would be great to have a list of really good ones that I can send to people who want information on how to operate better. What do you think? Do we need to be more proactive about encouraging hams to use good operating practices? If so, how do we go about it? What do you do to encourage better operating practices? ============================================================== When not worrying about the state of amateur radio operating practices, youll find KB6NU working on updates to his No Nonsense study guides, teaching one-day Tech classes, or blogging about amateur radio at kb6nu.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 18:17:54 +0000