As one who has probably had the most classes in my area to bring in new hams over several decades, there is no question that the new entrants tend to not be near as motivated as we once had. That is because it brings in a larger number of those who have more of a superficial interest. When no code Technician class license arrived both my wife and daughter were licensed. Now with the no code HF licenses, my wife recently upgraded to General. It was very, very difficult for her since this stuff does not transfer by osmosis from having another ham in the family:) Her interest is very specific and that is communicating longer distances than is possible with VHF simplex and repeaters. Also, supporting local public service. Without these new hams, our club would not be able to sustain our emergency and public service activities. (Yes, we are trying to incorporate digital modes too, but it is slow going. Especially when for the last two events, the Winlink 2000 Telpac stuff just would not work when we needed it:(
Because of the easier license, particularly with the total elimination of morse code requirements, many more people have licenses today. If you look at the numbers of hams here in the U.S. over the last 40 years, we had a large increase, several times higher than population growth, compared to when I first was licensed in 1963. Thus, we have had this increase due to the reduction of entry requirements, not because of an increase in interest. There will likely be a residual of the population who have some kind of innate interest in radio communications, but it would not be enough to maintain our current percentage of the population and might decline to the percentages we had in the past (even with the easier licensing requirements). This would have lead to the loss of political clout, and the loss of hams who will participate in community support. It is often the younger or at least newer entrants who will participate in emergency communications, public service, and local activities. The older hams tend to want to socialize and not be all that active since they have done all these things long ago and find it physically challenging at times to keep active. We have seen this cycle occur over the years with several clubs as they grow, level out, and often eventually decline unless new members take a leadership position. This can really impact digital modes because there are so very few of us. If you lose a good percentage of hams, you will may even more digital oriented ones. On the other hand, I am hopeful that we will see more HF digital activity with the influx of new HF priveleges. It has not happened in my local area so far. Only perhaps 2% of hams do much digital on HF. Almost no one does text digital keyboarding and messaging above VHF anymore due to the demise of packet. Quite a change from only a decade ago. 73, Rick, KV9U John Champa wrote: > Good points, all. > > When I recently read that even with the huge influx of new no-code Hams, > that our population is still down 16K from last year...well, it looks like > we are > dead already. > > But I keep trying anyway. I got two individuals to get their tickets this > year. > And, one of them even joined the ARRL, so there (HI). > > 73, > John - K8OCL >
