HamRadioNow: That ARRL Entry Level License Survey

Oh, I would very much like to see those numbers.

ARRL can't complain when people criticize them for activities they undertake based on numbers that are kept secret.

 

They aren't kept secret. The committee members aren't under any NDA....MAYBE SOMEONE SHOULD ASK THEM TO PRESENT AT DAYTON...doncha think??

 

And yet, they aren't published. You would think someone who had a factual, data-backed case to make would put all their cards on the table. Several of us on these licensing threads have asked repeatedly for a fact-based showing of the "problem" that warrants a change in the licensing, and nobody to date has done so. If ARRL doesn't publish them, there is no reason to believe they exist.

Further, even if your assertion was true:

...it still does nothing to increase the on-air activity. License numbers continue to climb even with the licensing system we have today. So if the goal is more licensees, you have that now. Where's the data showing that the easier license produces more active (or higher-quality, or better-trained, or whatever) operators?

 

Y-O-U-N-G people....get it right Jack...don't sublimate to BS.

 

The ARRL wants more memberships, it comes down to the big buck..

 

Wow, you get downright ugly when you are losing an argument.

I look forward to those ARRL numbers showing that young people need an easy test (that would put them at General class, by FCC estimates, which are publicly available), or that younger people are somehow more of an asset or otherwise more important than anyone else.

In the absence of other data, this is a logical conclusion.

 

Let me make this as direct as possible:

1) Ham radio is dying because of the absence of young people;
2) Young people consider the Tech license study boring and/or onerous;
3) Many young people are lost because they don't want to take the Tech license exam;
4) Another entry license with a more sparse study set would attract more young people;
5) Historically, the largest influx of new young hams correlates with a far more sparse study-set entry license (historically, the novice, in its first 20 years).

 

Where is the data, the proof?

 

My wife took the technicians exam without even studying for it, so she could talk to me on the radio. Later she told me she wasn't really interested in this CB thing anymore.

She has no interest in electrical things and passed the test easily, she laughed about it at the time and still does to this day. If anything it resulted in her having some contempt for ham radio operators in general because to her, this technician thing seemed childish.

Just because something is easy to achieve it does not mean anyone actually wants it or even respects it.

Just how simple does it have to be?

 

What is wrong with that, do you go to work everyday and don't expect to get paid for what you have done..

 

Simple enough to not drive young people off in droves, and magic because getting OTA drives their curiousity to learn---much, much more. Look at young people as experiential and you will get it.

 

So with that, why even have a test.

 

So a kid's playing with his smart phone and you think he's going to get excited about speaking into a big CB radio, because to him, that's all it is. Where is the appeal?

A simple license in desperate hope he may be interested? There was a time when a CB license cost money too, not today but today nobody cares...

 

Exactly. And they want to make it simpler.

 

Here's what happens when you make it too burdensome for young people ...'what will we answer them?'

starring Mr. Mojo Risin'