Keith ) writes:
I mean I'm not the only person that thinks this about the ARRL, FCC and the
morse code lunatics that have kept the ranks of ham radio so small it is ripe
for the pickings by the commercial entities. The utilities will destroy HF with
BPL and the rest of 50 Mhz and up bands that are worth billions of dollars will
be sliced up in short order.

When was the last time you heard about amateur radio in your local newspaper
or on your local tv stations? When your local ham clubs have an event, be
it club meetings, Field Day, hamfest or something else that the public might
like to know about, do they bother to get listed in the local events columns,
and try to get mention on TV and radio, and even post to your local
newsgroups?

Or to put it another way, how did you find out about amateur radio?

When I was a kid, I learned about it when there was an article in
a publication intended for children. When I discovered hobby electronic
magazines, amateur radio was still a part of those magazines, though
it was right on the cusp of their disappearing. But when I could try
for a license, I had to dig around to find a local ham club, going to
the ARRL because I didn't know of any local clubs, and had no way of
finding them.

One of the failures of amateur radio is that it doesn't do a particularly
good job of outreach. Notice there is a big difference between trying
to sell something to fill seats, and trying to share something because
it's important to you and you want others to know about it.

Over the 31 years since I've been licensed, my impression is that
amateur radio has increasingly disappeared from public view. Yes,
there is the argument that ham radio has less and less relevance,
but that just means people need to work harder at conveying thei
importance of the hobby to themselves.

Meanwhile, the licensing requirements have become less and less.
About fifty years ago, you might say the halfway point of
amateur radio, your FCC introduced the then-novel novice license, to make
the entry requirements simpler. A simple test, a 5wpm code test, limited
operating priviliges, and only valid for a year. Over the years,
that was modified for less restrictive rules, and more priviliges.
The US Technician license came out at the same time, and originally
was only good for 220MHz and above. That too was modified tremendously
over the years. Then the code was dropped for the technician class.

Here in Canada, we had a no-code license a quarter century ago. But
virtually nobody used it. Then in 1990, we got restructuring, and
there was an entry level license that did not require a code test.

So over fifty years, half of the time that amateur radio has been
around, it has become increasingly simpler for people to join the hobby
in North America.

Yet, instead of doing a better job of outreach, the focus is always
on making the license requirements simpler. Keep it up, and there
will be absolutely no entry requirement.

You think we need numbers to justify the bands, so you want to
lessen entry requirements. But that may be a false path. Maybe
we justify the ham bands because it is something more than a place
to yak it up.

Maybe the kids that use to come to ham radio aren't even hearing
about the hobby in the first place. Maybe if they knew, it could
be as appealing as it was to me when I was ten. Maybe like me,
the code and theory tests are not impediments to joining the hobby,
but a sense of accomplishment when they are passed. I was twelve,
and went from 0 to 12wpm in four months, and I know I was always
disappointed that I took the test (well, I had to go back a second
month to pass the code test) in the last week of grade 6, because
I was unable to boast to the kids at school.

Maybe the need or lack of a code test isn't an issue to many people,
because they haven't heard of amateur radio in the first place.

Methinks you don't have a clue about the history of amateur radio.
It didn't start when some regulatory body decided there should
be a place for people to talk to their heart's delite. There
were radio hobbyists almost as soon as Marconi spanned the Atlantic
in 1901, when there were no rules and there wasn't even any use
for radio. Those hobbyists played with this new thing, and in
part helped to propel the field along. I'm not sure you could
separate amateur from professional in those days. It was only
once there started to be uses for radio that any rules were put
in place. And amateur radio became a service in those early
days by virtue of staking out a claim right from the start.

Dilute the entry requirements too much, and what do you have
to justify the bands, other than large numbers?

But shift it back to where the test is not just an obstacle
to overcome, and you may again make the hobby something that
society in general benefits from.

Michael VE2BVW