Jeff Davis wrote:

You are correct that folks are living longer these days and that will no
doubt work in our favor, but it is inevitable that we will begin losing hams
in much greater numbers as we approach 2020.

I think that the issue is closer than that, and more significant. The
problem is that as the ham radio population ages, a lot of the older
hams become inactive. They're still licensed and that license is still
counted in the statistics, but as far as the health of the hobby goes
they're effectively gone.

ARRL membership has been growing, too.

That has been a bright spot, in my opinion, but I only point it out because
some League detractors use the old line that the ARRL can only attract 25%
of licensed hams as an argument for how unpopular Newington is among the
base. I'd argue that it better reflects the actual number of active radio
amateurs since those who are no longer active would not likely maintain
league membership and the most active among us invariably do.

I wonder. There are active hams who don't belong to the ARRL because
they're too cheap or because they have policy disagreements with the
organization. There are inactive hams who do belong to the ARRL just to
keep up with a hobby that they want to get back into some day. I have
no idea which segment is bigger, but I suppose that ARRL membership does
correlate with the number of active hams.

I'm all for growth since I think we are in for a big dip in the not too
distant future, but I'm also not certain that there is any historic
correlation between growth in the service and sunspot activity. And if there
is, it might be bad news since Cycle 24 is now predicted to be the weakest
cycle in a century.

I agree with both statements.

At least part of the growth in recent years has been from people who
"always wanted" to get a ham ticket but were put off by the code
requirement. This pent up demand will eventually be exhausted.

As for the magic of the sunspot cycle, what percentage of new hams get
into the hobby so that they can work DX? Those are the ones that would
be affected by knowing that band conditions are improving. My personal
experience suggests that that is a small percentage.

We probably won't be able to bring new hams onboard at a pace that will
match the attrition of the next decade, but that is no reason not to do all
that we can -- and one thing is to begin thinking about how we are going to
justify our continued occupation of radio spectrum with a lot fewer licensees.

For HF, that isn't likely to be much of an issue since the commercial
and government users have found other alternatives, resulting in much
less demand for that bandspace. I wonder about VHF/UHF . . . since
there's so much more of it, maybe it will not be a huge issue.

It's a problem that Icom, Kenwood, Yaesu and the others are no doubt already
thinking about too...

The big players have protected themselves by making the ham radio market
only a tiny part of their sales. But you're right; with less customers
out there, the prices will go up and the amount of choice will go down.

73, Steve KB9X