FCC license numbers 3/15/05

"the arrl is at an all time low recruiting prospects because of the complaints you read out here so often-- they need a new direction--- QUALITY"


No, I don't think so... The ARRL membership is at an all time low, because the number of ACTIVE hams is at an all time low.

When the tide goes out, all the boats go down.... And all the fish get unhappy, and start sniping at each other.

 

"Obviously the sky is falling and we need to immediately give away licenses in order to shore up our numbers."

Maybe we should just recognize that like the Elks, Moose, and Shriners, our numbers are dwindleing, and there isn't a heck of a lot we can do about it. I don't think that giving away the store will help. I think we should do our best to slow the losses, and fish where the fishing is best (retirees).

The Elks haven't been able to solve their problem, and in all likelyhood, we will not either.

I think it is safer to have Ham Radio as a smaller group of highly trained skilled individuals than a large group of untrained unskilled people. Who will want to be a ham if being a ham means nothing more than filling out the paperwork?

 

Amateur radio may not be in the mainstream flow (at least to the young), for a variety of reasons. They haven’t heard of it, though they‘ve grown up with just about every other gadget imaginable. Too much competetion for their interest. This and that.

Watching my grandson open his birthday presents showed me this a while back. Having already received a mountain of toys in the past, with “all sorts of “bells and whistles”, he was less impressed the more he received. He played with a few for a short time, then shoved them aside for the next thing that caught his attention, the pots and pans in the kitchen cubboard. A snapshot of human nature.

I think the kids of today are overwhelmed with choices just like that. What is the most entertaining is usually the “instant winner”, although in many cases that is not true. Easy come, easy go. Don’t think, let the “widget” do it for you. How can we expect kids, raised in this environment, to appreciate much, if anything, especially if it involves WORK. I think the answer is obvious.

Yet, that does not mean there are not opportunities to recruit future operators from the ranks of the young. The radio club I belong to is now working with an elementary school and highschool to help build an amateur radio station in each. Grants have been applied for and received, the ARRL has been approached for their assistance, equipment is/will be purchased. Teachers and principles are enthusiatically preparing for their license tests. The kids are chomping at the bit.

Our county is rural wooded hill country with not much for kids to do, or so they say. Sure, they have access to computers and all the rest of the technology at school, as these things have been a part of school’s curriculum for years. Perhaps they just haven’t been bombarded by technology to the point of brain fade. At any rate, they’re enthusiastic and it will be a great opportunity for us OT to pass on what we can and bring “some” of them along in Amateur Radio.

As for the CW controversy. Geeze, it’s almost like trying to get a kid to take medicine or eat their spinach. No I won’t! Yes you will! No I won’t! Yes you will!

Don’t know if anyone thinks about this, but we have absolutely no guarantee our present technology will be here tomorrow. CW may be “old school “, but it is still a very usefull and efficient form of communication. How in the world can we justify any action that excludes its use. Can we say, “it will never happen, here” after the attack on the WTC on 9/11/01? Will we never be rendered helpless and incommunicado by natural or man made disasters?

If we do away with the code requirement, we do away with the code, period.! No one else here will taking up the cause. With the current 5 wpm requirement for upgrades, it’s no big deal, and it’s not difficult to pass the test. IMO it’s just plain silly resistance and in some cases, laziness that keeps this from being an issue. You’ll spend more time learning how to program your new Icom than you will passing the code test. Meanwhile, are you waiting for the ARRL/FCC “welfare system” to give you a license upgrade? Quit complaining and earn the damn upgrade. Your wasting time you could be spending on the HF bands. Oh, you’re going to wait for the rest of the 250,000 NCT’s to show up on HF first. Nice strategy!

Let me leave you with something about keeping. Dateline: 1940’s, WW2, South Pacific theater. The Japanese have english interpretors who are intercepting military radio message traffic and are premempting our military strategies. American lives being lost as a result. The solution: A ancient language, hundreds of years old, totally archaic to the present, that only natives from the Navajo nation speak. Codetalkers, as they were called. The Codetalkers handled the radio traffic, in the Navajo tongue. The Japanese military was totally confused and confounded, because they had no clue! Taken by surprise, they were defeated by an ancient code. It worked and it worked well. Saved our butts! Because it was a part of a culture revered and still practiced, the Navajo language prevailed as the “code” at that time. It prevails today.

Let us, likewise, revere Amateur Radio: keep the code, raise the bar, dumb down nothing, mentor the willing when possible, and keep a close eye on the ARRL, if you want to keep Amateur Radio alive and healthy. We need quality, not necessarily quantity and should be doing these things just for the enjoyment of doing them. The numbers, in the end, aren’t that important.

73
K9REH

 

KE6IRP,

I don't think I understood what you were trying to say by refering to QUALITY as the new direction for the ARRL.

I realize you meant QUALITY instead of QUANTITY.

I think we are on the same page in that respect.

 

I know you directed the question to Jim, but as a retired marketing/pr consultant my answer:  Editors can smell articles with a commercial agenda.  Many self serving attempts to get free advertising are rejected.  But, in some cases an article might be published anyway if the editor deems the content to be of substantial interest/value to the readers.  In our case, amateur radio is a not-for-profit pursuit.  No problem on that front.  

73 Mike

 

Can't resist weighing in on this one.

I got into ham radio in 1965. There were no personal computers, no cell phones, no Internet, no VCRs (I recorded Star Trek live via a microphone placed near the TV speaker into a reel-to-reel tube type tape recorder!), and no video games. I discovered ham radio after building a Heathkit GR-64 shortwave receiver and asking my dad what an "Amateur band" was. Today there are huge demands on a kid's time. Can radio be as exciting as that other stuff? We all know it is, and it has nothing to do with talking to people. It has to do with the nature of radio. Making your voice come out of someone else's radio, somewhere across the world, without using any commercial infrastructure, is just plain fun.

I was part of the post-WWII baby boom. Our journey through adolescence coincided with the Cold War and the race to the moon along with a rapidly advancing electronic technology. Thus, as more people were needed to be engineers and scientists, the larger base was there to draw from. That has all but disappeared. Fact is, hams represent 0.2% of the population (0.1% active). Almost always have, probably always will. Want more hams? Make more babies. Simple.

It was an amazing era (1960-1975): the pill, Cuban missile crisis, miniskirts, JFK and RFK and MLK assassinations, Mercury/Gemini/Apollo/Skylab, the coming of age of TV (including satellite TV transmissions and the B/W->color transition), a tremendous amount of memorable music, variety shows that brought famous singers and comedy acts into our 3-channel living rooms several times a week, lasers, tube->transistor->IC transformation in electronics, heart transplants, sex changes, the beginning of the influx of below-cost Japanese goods into America (forcing American companies out of business), and on and on. There was stuff happening ALL the time.

Today, there are still interesting things happening, although I might argue that it's more "refinement" than true breakthroughs and paradigm shifts: HDTV, blazingly fast PCs/PDAs/etc., rapid medical advances due to mapping of the human genome, beginnings of a permanent human presence on the moon and Mars, flat panels (about time - been wanting one since Star Trek first appeared on TV!). Still waiting for my Jetson's flying car.

Point is, someone has to be inventing this stuff. These are technological inventions, same as yesterday. Is everyone who invents this stuff from India or China or Korea now? American universities are still churning out EE's aren't they? Do any of these graduates build stuff? solder? invent? construct high-end audio systems? go into the technical side of radio/tv broadcasting? They have to be there. We need to reach into universities and high schools and find these people. We don't need to do what we did in the 70's - encourage the masses to get a 2M FM rig to have easy cross-town communications. Ham radio is about far more than that. Let's not apologize for it.

We seem to be holding our own after more than doubling our size since 1970. I think we are just regrouping, taking a collective breath before diving into the future.

I'm doing what I can. Look for some interesting announcements at Dayton from DZKit.

 

Where does the $ come from?--- Well, good question--- value added deals like these are common place--- the money comes commercially from the allied partners in the deals--- radio companies, ant. companies, mainstream biz wanting to be good corp citizens and suport civil defense etc etc etc------ thousands of non profits engae in this----- but for a non profit membership grassroots concern the bottom line needs to be recruit recruit recruit--- or the 3 m's if you will------ membership, media or money--- it's a filter-- other than mission related advocacy or programs a good grassroots membership driven non profit should not do ANYTHING if it does not obtain one of the 3m's in any single transaction--- period. This may sound harsh but in fact it is the opposite----- a grassroots membership organization that is not growing budget/membership is not healthy--- period......and--- is violating the trust of its donors..... Chris-- KE6IRP (I'll join and bring 6 of my buddies when the arrl stops the dumb down petition or at least does not give away hf wholesale like the current postion endorses...)

 

who really cares.. obiously cell phones are making a big difference.. in the local area if u are not talking about something boring then or u are not in the click u are not accepted.. no wonder people are dropping out of the hobby like flies.. just accept that it is a dying hobby to most.. just enjoy it until it is dead.. most people want to judge u when u are on the air of anything u say and all they want to do in the local area is talk about their antenna or radio it is so boring i don;t blame anyone for getting out of it .. a gmrs radio will suit most peoples need for a radio or a cell phone. say good bye to it in the next 15 years and just accept it...:0

 

who really cares.. obiously cell phones are making a big difference.. in the local area if u are not talking about something boring then or u are not in the click u are not accepted.. no wonder people are dropping out of the hobby like flies.. just accept that it is a dying hobby to most.. just enjoy it until it is dead.. most people want to judge u when u are on the air of anything u say and all they want to do in the local area is talk about their antenna or radio it is so boring i don;t blame anyone for getting out of it .. a gmrs radio will suit most peoples need for a radio or a cell phone. say good bye to it in the next 15 years and just accept it...:0

 

Interesting observation.

Tech/+ has lost 15,857 since 5/2000. General (+24,657) and Extra (+27,747) has gained 52,145 in total. Advanced has lost 22,747 and Novice has lost 20,231

Each year there are about 20,000 new licensees coming into the service, most of which are Techs.

I think what might be happening is that the vast majority of the increase in the Extra class came early on from the the pool of General and Advanced class hams (13 WPM variety) which existed prior to 2000. The increase in the General is almost certainly due to the code requirement being reduced to 5 WPM.

Unfortunately, I do not have a good average of the monthly increase in Extra class licensees, but based on my small sample range, it is presently increasing at a bit over 100 per month, while every other class seems to be declining.

In order for the Extra to increase by 27,000+ over 5 years, an average of 463 hams per month would have had to upgrade over the period. This is why I think the largesest gains in the Extra class happened between 2000 and 2002/3.

The merging of the Tech and Tech+ has muddied the water a bit, as Tech+ is being renewed as Tech which expands the numbers of the Tech as the Tech+ declines.

The wild card is what might be happening to the Novice licensees. It has lost over 20,000 since 2000. I think some may have upgraded, especially to General, but it is possible that most of these have dropped out.

73
George
K3UD

 

n0uw, what a lousy attitude. Why not petition the FCC to donate your license to someone else if you hate the hobby so much. For me, it has all the richness it ever had, and then some. When I started, I couldn't do digital modes unless I had a mechanical teleprinter (which I went out and got, and then built the TU to make it work.) I couldn't work through satellites either. If people don't take up this fascinating hobby, they have only themselves to blame. There's something for everyone. If all you wanna do is talk to people through commercial infrastructure, then sure, go do it by cell phone or the Internet. That will leave .4-15 KHz more BW for me to play in.

We are a microcosm of society at large. Right now, our society is lazy and so are we. But a wake-up call is coming.

 

KE6IRP writes:

"You donate to an org that wins victories--- the arrl is asleep at the switch at this point (that's why you read this type of critique everywhere...) ---- the biggest threat to ham radio might now bee the arrl's foolish dumb down program in that it one---- will promote the wasting away of the quality of the ars and two--- it provides a complete false notion that the arrl is doing anything useful about improving the ars/hobby--- "

I agree. I wonder how well funded ARRl staff retirement accounts are. I bet they are quite successful on that all important issue!

W9WHE

 

I like talking about my rig and my ant...... by the way it's an icom 746 with a 5 band trapped vert up about 3 mtrs-------the key is a bencher and on phone i use a Hiel headset and boom mic--- there ya go matey....whadayougotom?

 

I dont understand why you used Novice and Advanced classes. Of course there is going to be a decline is those numbers since those classes no longer have tickets being issued. And guess what? Those numbers do show a decline because General classes increased. Who wants to be a tech class? Sure repeaters are fun and all, but the real fun is on the HF bands. I spend more time talking on the only HF band I have legal access to (11m) then I do on the VHF/UHF repeaters. I just started a general class with a local amateur radio club. I'll learn the CW only because I have to. Once I do it I will forget it and never use it again, like most do. So you can expect to see one more minus for the tech class and 1 more added to the general class in about 10 weeks.

Michael

 

Well....I guess you're right.  Since I didn't have to pass code to get my Tec, I'm just worthless.  In fact, I'm going to throw away my General Study guide, close the Ham Shack door, padlock it and find a new hobby....like crying in my beer....