RadioBanter - View Single Post - Ham-radio is a hobby not a service

March 6th 04, 05:19 PM

(William) wrote in
om:

Alun wrote in message
. ..
(William) wrote in
om:

Alun wrote in message
. ..

And your point is...?

I'm not really sure what you're getting at, but my point was that
it is reasonable to assume that everyone has a TV and a phone, for
example, but we're not yet at that point with cellphones. Close,
but not there yet. Of course, I would say that, as I don't have
one.

The level of use of ham radio is not particularly relevant to the
discussion, except in that there are clearly enough of us to help
out in an emergency.

OK, Alun, lets look at it another way.

We agree that cellular phones can be useful in an emergency.

We agree that not everyone has a cellular phone, maybe only 1/3 of
the US population.

We know that there are very, very, very few amateur radio operators
per capita in the US population.

We can conclude that most people have better access to cellular
phones in an emergency than they have access to amateur radio.

Possibly true, so long as the cell towers are still standing.

Question: Are there more cell towers in America than there are
Amateur Radio Licensees?

Don't know, but if we fall over in an eartquake we just get back up...