N5NTG | 
06 8th, 2015| 
We have a couple of older Ham’s {Licensed in the mid 70’s} having what is a typical conversation of how the “newbies” have destroyed Amateur Radio, and the hobby is dying. The claim that “newbies” ruined the hobby by using computers to track propagation, useful tools such as DX Summit and these new fangled things called Grid Squares.
I started to think about this, do they have a point? A lot has changed since I got into the hobby, and we will see many more changes in the future, but the honest truth is that the hobby is not dying, it is growing and is in fact larger than it has been any time through out history.
The simple truth is that “older hams” have been complaining about the “newbies” killing the hobby since the first Ham was licensed back in the spark gap days.
When AM first started to come on the scene, Spark Gap Operators complained about this new fangled mode of operating and how it was going to destroy the hobby, then few years later as SSB operating started to enter the picture those old AM operators complained about the Donald Duck Operators and how it was destroying the hobby and who can forget the day that CW was no longer required to gain a license, to hear from some old timers the planet Earth itself was going to stop rotating.
The simple truth it is the evolution of Amateur Radio that keeps us growing and the excitement and the WOW factor.
Yes, it is true that today very few Hams build his or her own radio, the simple truth is that we no longer need too with more modern transceivers on the market today and it is also beyond the capability of home technicians today with modern advancements such as surface mount devices, etc.
