Subject: License Fees --- a poll
From: (Michael Black)
Date: 8/12/2004 11:27 AM Central Standard Time
Message-id:

I suspect the majority of US hams were not licensed when incentive
licensing was introduced. After all, it's been 35 years, and the
various layers of simplification have brought in many new hams.

It has. I suspect your suspicion is correct!

I suspect the whole thing about incentive licensing is overblown.

Morbidly so. Of course the Hatfield's and McCoy's went at it for over a
hundred years, so I suspect those remaining few who got caught up in the
Incentive Licensing brohouha will keep barkling about it until they are gone.

How did incentive licensing damage the inflow of young people to the
hobby? It was the already licensed hams who grumbled, and who lost
anything.

BAM! Hammer hitting nail on the head.

BIG SNIP TO....

And getting back to the middle age men, it is they who keep repeating
the mantra "how can amateur radio be appealing in a world where every kid
has a cellphone and a computer?". So long as competition with society in
general is the pivot point, then of course there can be little appeal
to the youngster. Only by promoting the hobby's strengths and uniqueness
can one hope to compete with superior forms of communcation.

Amateur Radio has always appealed to a certain few, and those who are
interested in radio for radio's sake...not necessarily as the fastest way to
communicate or the most efficient.

I imagine it will always be so...

73

Steve, K4YZ