Some thoughts on gatekeeping

Christ, what the hell am I doing here with this? Ok...

I passed my foundation amateur radio licence (the lowest class available in the UK, introduced in the early 00s) in 2004 and then promptly had "mic fright" and never ever transmitted, save for opening the local repeater (a doodah that rebroadcasts a transmission to a wider area on another frequency) to see if my little handheld radio could do it and feeling all giddy when it responded. But what if I spoke and said the wrong thing? What if I got some detail wrong? Would I get somebody shouting at me? After that I just listened to stuff, radio scanning, shortwave broadcasts, that kinda thing.

And then after three years of living in Edinburgh I realised "hey, there are hills nearby, hills are good for radio" and had a bit of an epiphany. I had more of an epiphany when I discovered the Summits on the Air scheme and found that I could mix my love of the outdoors and walking up mountains with operating radios and building my own kit and seeing how far I can get. And points! Lovely, meaningless points! But it's a good little scheme and it gets me out of the house, definitely no bad thing.

I then went and joined the local amateur radio club - not something you HAVE to do, but something that is nice to do, especially if that club is installing equipment for community use and you're all chipping in etc. And also just to talk to a nice group of people and try and learn more from them and develop your skills. And that's going great. Sort of.

Unfortunately one thing I have come up against is the death knell of many a person's interest in a hobby - gatekeeping. Essentially putting up barriers to people taking part in and enjoying a hobby. It goes without saying that I don't need to explain this literally any further to the women reading this post, many of whom will already be quite familiar with it, especially in technology and science, two areas I enjoy very much.

There were previous, more general comments in the past. But something this morning really got to me. Essentially the criticism manifested itself in a way that I didn't expect - listening to two local amateurs (one of whom I like very much and is very helpful and patient with me) on my little radio in my ground-floor, thick-walled flat in the middle of the city (not great for optimal radio coverage at the best of times). It was not direct, nor was I named by the other operator in the exchange, but the context and content of the comment that annoyed me so much was very obviously me (specific equipment and operating style was mentioned that could only be me). And I think the person who did it forgets that I can receive on the particular mode of transmission they were using with my radio.

Now, foundation licence holders are never immune from criticism and there is much to be discussed about how people progress through a hobby, whether things are meant to be stepping-stones, and how big those gaps are, whether the knowledge gained is sufficient, etc. Radio is odd in that it is a hobby that requires government permission to participate in. I do not claim to know everything there is to know even at foundation level - how many of us have taken an exam or done some maths questions for fun on a Facebook quiz later in life and absolutely bombed them? I will frequently redo test questions at foundation level and sometimes I forget things. So I read up on them again and make sure I understand why I got them wrong. But I did attain a level that the executive branch of our government has decided is enough.

Sometimes the criticism is that people pass their foundation licence to just "get on the air" and then stop. So? What business is it of yours? There is an implication that you aren't really worth bothering with until you get your full licence. There are also some people that just won't respond to foundation licence holders putting out a call. What chance does somebody have to progress their skills and on-air technique if they can't even find anybody patient enough to chat to them? Honestly, if you've ever not returned a call because it's a foundation calling CQ then you're a piece of shit.

I had a nice little exchange at the weekend with a lovely chap who had passed his foundation licence earlier this year. He was very "green" on-air and got all his terms right, but did stumble sometimes. I can understand how a more seasoned operator would perhaps feel a bit put-out with the exchange. But he was very eager to learn and wanted to go further, just wasn't sure about a lot of things that he needed to read up on and was scared anout what was involved in learning the next "intermediate" licence step. I told him to take it at his own pace and listen to nobody - you don't have to do anything you don't want to, and there's no timelimit with hobbies. And that's what this is: a hobby. And it is of no business of anybody elses what you do for a hobby or how far you go for a hobby.

I'd rather have ten of this guy in the hobby than 1 Dick.

A second rebuttal to the criticism is somebody's individual circumstances. The implication that I had shitty equipment and can only hear half of the stations on our weekly chat, and that I have to "progress". Well yeah, OK: if I want to progress I can progress. However, there's more to a hobby than just somebody's willingness to learn something. There's also the more tangible areas of life, such as finances, and space, and time. I'd love to have a workbench or a shed so I can knock together my own little designs and try and make something better.

Problem is that I live in a pokey little 1-bedroom ground-floor flat in a shared tenement block. A lot of people who do amateur radio are boomers or above who bought their first house in the 1970s and 80s. Outer city suburbs. Large gardens. Space to erect things. The kind of disposable income that being alive during a particular time can bring. Lovely pension money, mmm, yum yum.

I have none of those things.

I am, at this moment, scraping together the money to buy a shortwave radio set. My first ever one. I'll be finally able to talk to the world and develop my skills a bit more. I cannot wait, frankly. I hope to have the same kind of revelatory response as some of the old timers in the hobby had when they first cranked up the volume on something they made themselves and heard some distant signal from another continent roll in.

I'm sure people in many hobbies will know this, but there is something so, so great about something you made working so well and being proud of it. One of the specific things criticised in the exchange I heard was the specific antenna I was using, one I made entirely by myself. It is nothing special. It is quite "beginner level". But after I made it I learnt a hell of a lot of things. More than I ever learnt by reading, that's for sure. And I was able to make some really nice longer-distance contacts with less power than before - effectively the efficiency is better and this is a good measure of how well you've made something.

But hearing somebody trash it so much, even if their intention is to encourage people to do something better, is certainly not the best way. I could hear the sneering in his voice, almost visualising his face screwing up on the other end of the ether. You know what would have been a nice thing to hear? "That's good work, I'm happy it went well and I hope you learnt a lot. If you need any help or advice with anything else or more complex, let me know?".

That's the kind of thing that actually helps a hobby grow and helps somebody to not think they're being pushed out of it. That they don't belong there or aren't good enough to be there. It is, however, nobody else's business if I choose not to go any further. Only my own. And that still doesn't get around the very real operating limitations that many radio amateurs are operating under. Consider other people's circumstances and please don't be a prick.

I'm not going to sit here and tell *everyone* that the best thing to do is ignore other people. There are people more qualified than me to give better advice on how to deal with things like this. Clearly I dont do well with it, so don't listen to me. But seriously, I am feeling pretty down-hearted about this hobby right now. Which is a shame, as I am just starting to get the hang of it.