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Steve Bonine · **July 22 2009 ARS License Numbers**

wrote:

Sure, if one goes to a hamfest or club meeting, one sees a lot of folks
who are probably AARP-eligible. But are those folks a representative
sample? I know more than a few younger hams who don't show up at such
gatherings because they simply don't have the time.

But you cannot ignore the other end of the curve. How many licensed
hams aren't showing up because they are too old to travel?

Maybe hamfest attendees and club meetings aren't a representative sample
of the ham community. But if that's the case, it has always been the
case. I can't claim scientific accuracy, but the age mix that I
remember from a few decades ago was much younger, and that's through the
eyes of a kid who thought anyone who was over 40 was tottering on the
grave's edge.

It just seems intuitive to me that the population in the hobby is aging.
In order for it not to be, you would need to recruit enough new hams
who were young enough to offset the march of time for the rest of the
population. A lot of new licensees these days are middle aged, rather
than the teenagers we used to see. Although their age is lower than the
current mean age, you have to have more of them to offset the inertia of
incrementing everyone's age each year.

Not that there's much you can do about the issue even if you accept the
fact that we may be marching off a cliff. I applaud the ARRL's efforts
to interest young folks in the hobby, and I hope it's working better in
other localities. I don't see a lot of success here.

73, Steve KB9X