"Brenda Ann" wrote in
:

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Say no to institutionalized interference.
Just say NO to HD/IBOC!
"John S." wrote in message
oups.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.

Want to see interest in radio pique?? Open up a band specifically for
unlicensed broadcasting. Not CB, not ham, but actual broadcasting. I can
see tens of thousands rushing to get in on that one..



That because they're all appliance operators, they don't want to put forth
an effort to learn and it will end up sounding like CB.


SC