wrote in message
...
On Sun, 27 Aug 2006 14:46:29 -0400, "L." wrote:
"John S." wrote in message
roups.com...
The point I was trying to make is that the amateur radio hobby matured
about 3 decades ago. It's membership is aging rapidly and the number
of active participants is declining. As the baby boomer generation
dies off at an increasing rate the amateur radio hobby will continue to
fade away. Fiddling with the test requirements isn't going to magically
entice younger blood away from the many other license-free ways of
communicating. I would venture to say that you could open the ham
bands completely CB style and not get a big jump in membership. There
are just too many other interesting, easy to use ways of communicating
that that younger people are accustomed to using. I wish it were
otherwise.
Making the ham radio test more of a challenge as you suggest misses the
point completely. The point is that there will be a diminishing number
of people with any interest becoming a ham, no matter what the
requirements are.
You "could" be and may very well be right in that regard as to the numbers
increasing or not if the bands were completely opened. But since most of
this crap evolved around CODE and then the "learning" ability of "exam"
material - those issues are not the complete problem. As I said, if you
want to "learn" anything, effort is the key
..more from the s&M shcool of lincense
http://www.marksspamblog.blogspot.com/