On May 7, 9:39�pm, RDWeaver wrote:
On May 7, 10:45 pm, "Dee Flint" wrote:

An activity like ham radio is going to have its ups and downs.
It will ebb and flow. These variations can last several years
so are hard to evaluate.

Dee, N8UZE

According to the figures that the OP posted here and in other threads
(no reason to doubt them) ham radio has had steady "ups" with no
"downs" to a high in 2003.

Not exactly.

In the mid 1960s the growth stalled while the US population grew
rapidly. The percentage of the population that were hams went *down*
during the decade of the 1960s.

Compare 1960 to 1970 in terms of hams-per-1000 and see.

If you look at the annual numbers from 1965 to 1975 the total went
down some years and up others.

Then in just the past 4 years (2003-2007)
the number of "hams/1000 population" has fallen to BELOW the ratio of
1990.

Yup. Think about *why* that would happen, even though the license
requirements were reduced in 2000 and again in 2007.

In other words, after //many\\ UNBROKEN DECADES of rising
popularity, in just //4 years since 2003\\ we have shed the gains of
the previous 13 years and continue to head south.

Not really. The 1960s were a down decade. That means 3 decades of
rising popularity (1970s/1980s/1990s)

Calling that "ebb
and flow" is, in my opinion, a bad case of 'whistling past the grave
yard'.

Well, what do you think is really happening?

The fellow in another thread talking about the 'last generation' may
be onto something.

One thing that has changed greatly in my 40 years as a ham is the age
of a typical newcomer. I'm not saying that's good or bad, just that it
happened.

In the 1960s, when I became a ham, and well into the 1970s, most of
the newcomers I encountered were teenagers or twentysomethings.

But as the 70s went on, more and more new amateurs were in their 30s,
40s, and older.

In particular, during those decades I saw more and more people taking
up amateur radio as a retirement or empty-nest activity.

There were still plenty of teenagers and even preteens becoming hams
then - and still are. But the percentages shifted.

When I was a new ham in 1967, it was a safe bet that if I met an
amateur who was 10 or more years older, that amateur had been a ham
longer than me. But by 1980 I often encountered hams who were older
than me but hadn't been licensed nearly as long.

One of the great things about amateur radio is that it's about as
close to a life-long activity as you can get, and people of almost all
ages can become hams. But as more and more people are first-licensed
later in life, their time as amateurs grows shorter, and the turnover
increases.

That's just one factor of many. The change in license term, changes in
the typical American family, changes in where people live and work,
and many other factors all combine to change the numbers.

In a previous post I wrote of the "honeydew hams" (which may be an
East Coast term) who got licenses for personal-communications purposes
in the days before cell phones were inexpensive and ubiquitous.
Whatever you call them, there were lots of 'em entering ham radio 30,
20, even 15 years ago. Today there are almost none - cell phones do
the job 99% of the time.

Plenty of other examples.

None of that means amateur radio is dying or that we are the last
generation. Rather it means amateur radio is changing - as it always
has. Most of the reason to become a ham today is because someone is
interested in 'radio for its own sake' - an end in itself, not a means
to another end.

73 de Jim, N2EY