Good News for Amateur Radio Operators

Dog gone it! I want an advanced class ticket! I missed it by 3 questions and settled as a general. Must be someway to petition the powers that be to upgrade my 13wpm general into a conditional advanced class ticket holder!
Hmmm time travel isnt likely, how to do this hmmmm?

 

is that how u spell it?

 

Well, how do you spell Amateur ?

Originally the word was Amātor in Latin. The French gave us the current spelling of Amateur.

Dictionaries and or Spell Check are good options for the non wordsmith.

 

The trend that's most telling to me is the increasing gap between Active and Obtained. The gap started in 2000, when the CW requirement was reduced to 5 WPM, and spiked again when in 2007 when the CW requirement was removed. The gap between Obtained and Active appears to be widening over time. So, in 1999, practically all obtained licenses were active. In 2018, about 60% of obtained licenses are active. To me, this means either a license is too accessible and people get them to hang on the wall, or the hobby has changed to where it is attracting people who simply have a fleeting interest in radio, for whatever reason. As soon as the new iPhone comes out, they're done.

How is this good news?

 

A local VE team licensed a group of college students involved in a satellite project. There must have been 2 dozen or more and they all have the same address in the FCC record. I expect all of them will be expired at the end of the term.

73, Larry WB8LBZ
El Paso, TX

 

According to K1KI's pre election mailing 2017 nationwide growth was just .7% in 2017 and barely averaged 1% for the past 7 years.

Carl
1968 Incentive Licensing 20 wpm Extra

 

Proud to be one of only 40,000 Advanced Class Operators

 

Ok does anyone else see an issue with this graph?

 

Personally, I am not to eager to double the growth rate until we get out of this
trash can solar cycle. Props are so bad that getting any decent distance at all on
HF requires FT8, and if you have been on FT8 at 20m and 40m lately, there is not
a lot of room for doubling the users right now, unless FT8 takes over the entire band

Of course, once we get some sunspots back, all types of modes on all types of bands will
work, and we can all spread out better. But right trying to find a spot to call CQ on FT8
gets a little frustrating at times

Cheers,

N6YFM

 

If we doubled the ham population, we could easily expand FT8 to 3 more channels without it bothering anyone (except a few RTTY curmudgeons).

Elmers and clubs and ARRL books have been teaching the new ops wrong ways of dealing with HF propagation, based upon how HF used to be when we had monster solar cycles.

Those teachings have made the new operators' HF experiences dismal, and their expectations are entirely wrong due to wrong techniques.

Yes, HF propagation is bad. But it still exists.

Traditional skeds or nets, that depend on a single band at a set time, are wholly inadequate for the type of propagation environment we see here in the valley of the sunspot cycle.


The HF bands are often open... The lights are on, but nobody's home.

We need to throw out most old notions of propagation prediction.

It's not that difficult to get HF right.
For example, I have daily SSB voice QSOs on HF during commute hours with a friend 300 miles away who runs HF mobile.
We both only run 125 Watts, and simple antennas.
But, our regular QSO over the past week has happened on 7 MHz, 5 MHz, 3.8 MHz, and 1.9 MHz.
We never know which band it will be on before the QSO starts.
But it always works.

Propagation: "Don't blink or you'll miss it"

 

Ah, statistics. They can be used to "prove" almost anything, depending upon which figures you choose to include or omit, and how you "crunch" the numbers.

 

There are statistics, damned statistics, and then there are government statistics. Give me the right metric and I'll prove that Rhode Island is in some sense bigger than Alaska!

 

I was Advanced Class for about 25 years and just decided to walk into a test session one weekend and take the Extra class - glad I did. I feel like I finished something (for a change).

 

I would say that a near 100 % active fraction in 1999 and 60 % today is highly optimistic.

A "rule of thumb" in the 60s/70s was not more than 2/3 active of the amateur population,
reduced to about 1/2 in the 80s.

Research made in connection with the IARU "Foresight Project" in 2010 pointed in the direction that
around 90-95 % of newly licenced amateurs are not measurably active after two years.

Obeservations also point in the direction that the vast majority, perhaps 90%, are completely indifferent
regarding the quality and future of amateur radio.

As the saying goes: "Easy come,easy go..."

73/
Karl-Arne
SM0AOM