On Apr 26, 5:49?am, wrote:

Looking back over the past decade or so, I see the following trends:

- The number of US hams grew in the early 1990s but began a slow
decline in the late 1990s.
- The number of US hams grew in the early 2000s (2000-2003, after the
rules changes that went into effect in April 2000) but the growth was
not sustained and began a slow decline in the mid-2003
- The recent changes (Feb 2007) appear to have stopped the decline in
the short term.
- Both the 2000 and 2007 rules changes had the effect of a far greater
number of existing hams upgrading than new hams joining.

Was there really any expectation to the contrary, Jim?

There's not been ten cents worth of promotion of the new
licenure requirements in the non-Amateur press, ie: Pop Science, Pop
Mechanics, etc etc etc...

WE know all albout the changes...No one else does, and even if
the ARRL, CQ, W5YI, etc started the full court press I seriously doubt
we'd see more than that same brief surge as you noteed above....Oh, to
be sure there's going to be a handful of the 11 meter DX crowd that
decides to "go legal", but that's still a very samll percentage.

Nope...I think we're getting all the "influx" now that we will.
I've said it before and here it is again...Amateur Radio does NOT need
"big numbers"...We need to have QUALITY licensees...That means solid
skills and a NON-COMPROMISED question pool like we have today.

73

Steve, K4YZ