Leo wrote:
On 20 Oct 2005 09:40:10 -0700, wrote:
Leo wrote:
On 15 Oct 2005 14:02:03 -0700, wrote:
From: Leo on Oct 15, 9:36 am
On 14 Oct 2005 15:02:32 -0700, wrote:
Leo wrote:
On 14 Oct 2005 12:39:50 -0700, wrote:
From: on Oct 14, 9:20 am
Bill Sohl wrote:
wrote in message
wrote:
snip
When were you a kid, Leo? Ham radio is far more
popular today than when I was a kid.
About the same time as you were - I was born in 1955.
Then we're almost exactly the same "vintage".
Comparing the total number of amateur licenses existing
today is an
apples-to-oranges comparison, and not a true indicator of the
"popularity" of the hobby then or now.
Why? I realize that we have to allow for the population
increase. But when you do that, the inescapable conclusion
is that the ratio of the number of hams to the total population is more
now than it was in 1955, or 1965, or 1975, etc. Only very recently has
the growth curve flattened out.
In the '60s, morse code was a mandatory requirement for an
amateur
license (up here anyway) - and at a difficult 13 words per
minute, not our easy 5.
It was a requirement for all US ham licenses until 1991, when
the Technician lost its code test requirement.
Whether 13 wpm is "difficult" or not depends on the person
and the training methods.
Today, there are vast numbers of amateurs who hold
licenses where no code test was required - around half of the
total.
In the USA or Canada?
Slightly less than half of US hams hold Technician licenses, but
there's no way of knowing how many have passed the code test.
How many amateur licenses would have been issued back then if
a 'no
code' license had been available? - I'd speculate that there
would have been a lot!
Maybe. And if the written test were trimmed down to almost nothing,
there may have been more, too.
And you'd think that increasing the testing requirements would have
reduced the number of hams significantly, right?
Yet here in the USA, the exact opposite happened in the 1970s.
There's also the factor of how long somebody stays interested. And what
they do when they have the license.
As far as populatity goes, I'd say that the general public back then
seemed to be far more aware of even the existence of the hobby than it
appears to be today (wonder if there's a survey available
anywhere on
this anywhere.....). For example, all of my friends and I knew about
amateur radio back then - both of my teenage sons indicate that the
majority of their contemporaries have no idea at all that the
hobby
even exists. Those who are aware are pretty much disinterested in the
activity - they have more fun and interesting things to do!
But are you and your friends a representative sample?
When I was growing up, most people, kids or adults, had no idea
what ham radio was unless they were related to or good friends
with a ham.
I grew up in a suburb of Philadelphia that was mostly blue- and
white-collar middle class families. Lots of kids, houses ranging from
rowhomes to big single Dutch Colonials. Yet there were less than a
dozen hams in the whole township then, all spread out, and about half
were inactive or minimally active.
In my high school (grades 9/10/11/12), which had over 2500 boys and
emphasized math and science, there were perhaps a half-dozen hams in
the 4 years I was there.
The main problem wasn't code or theory, for those who were interested.
It was space for an antenna and money for equipment.
Most people, young or old, thought ham radio looked like a kind of fun
thing, when they found out about it. But not enough to spend the
necessary time and money to set up a station, let alone get a license.
IMHO one of the biggest reasons ham radio isn't better known
is that it's not a very "visual" thing - it doesn't translate well to
TV or a movie.
Maybe we're using the wrong term - perhaps instead of "popularity",
what you are describing is better described as "visibility" or
"recognition by the public".
73 de Jim, N2EY