Bill Coleman wrote:
You missed my point: Without a steady influx of new hams, the hobby
will
eventually die out. Worse, because of the effects of 10-year licenses,
the hobby may already be shrinking, we just don't know about it yet.
Well, in fact we do know about it. Part of the FCC database contains
license renewal, cancellation, purged, expired, ect information.
In the main program I use to decode the database, I manipulate the
date of the computer ( today for example ) and the date attached to
each of the paragraph 2 files.
In this manner, any call which is available for reassignment is
omitted, and only those calls within the 2 year window are retained.
There are 64,970 calls of this type at this time in the FCC database.
The database also shows ( including the above ) 715,873 as the ham
population. Of these, 7057 are Clubs, the vast majority ( over 90 % )
special interest such as high school, boy scouts, packet, VHf, UHF,
commercial company clubs, and a host of others, some with almost
obscene names. Oh, can't forget the hundreds of "Krishna" clubs.
In my opinion, we are shrinking because of a lack of ambition on the
part of new hams to really do the work necessary to qualify for a
license. And the fact that the "real" hams among us are aging. Take a
look at the SKs in QST. An astounding number of 1x2 or 2x1 calls.
Want to know how many no code Techs and Novices are in the file?
Thousands and thousands. ARRL membership is now about 62% of the
"shack on a belt" type.
73
Ed
|