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Before and After Cessation of Code Testing
"AF6AY" wrote in
oups.com: In general I agree with you Mike. I've had some trouble getting to the website where Hans got his numbers; www.ncvec.org doesn't have any page with that information. Other than that, amateur radio licensee numbers MUST remain "up" in order to indicate to the government there is a "presence" of citizens in a sizeable number that deserves attention. There are many different radio services regulated by the FCC and amateur radio is a minority among those. Agreed. I'm glad someone got that into this conversation. That we have these allocations at all is a minor miracle. Numerical preservation is one of the ways that we will keep them, IMO. Why? Some have speculated that the majority of that drop-off was a change in communication habits, ie. Hams who got their licenses for purposes of "calling home" to check in, or get a grocery list, or the like. Some call that flavor of Ham a "honeydo" Ham. These people are served by Cell phones now. Based on my experience in southern California, I took the "honey-do" license reason as pure speculation on others' part. What I have seen here in the last decade is: (1). A rapid growth of cellular in its present compact HT form; (2). a growth of "technician" type VHF and UHF activity which had already begun well back before the year 2000 Restructuring. Yes, most of the reasons given are spectulation, and when that happens we tend to inject our own personal views into that speculation. I don't really know the cause of the drop-off, am just making a (hopefully) intelligent guess. 8^) Caveat: I live in a large urban population area, not unlike the NYC-LI, Chicago, San Francisco ('Bay Area'), Seattle, etc. areas. VHF-UHF at LOS paths works well in such areas. But, there is another part of VHF-UHF radio activity that doesn't quite have the parallel of HF DX hunting, in-person get- togethers, spontaneous or planned. From th etimes that I was out there, that would be VHF nirvana, tall mountains and fairly flat valleys. I suspect the canyons might be a little challenging tho'. Back here in PA we have nice mountains, but so many foothills and corduroy valleys that make repeater work a little more challenging. But even that can be overcome with effort and fairly deep pockets. We have a very good local repeater system, with several polling stations on the local mountains that vote on which signal gets to the main repeater. A 300 mw HT cam be used over almost the entire county. There's more activity of radio amateurs above 30 MHz than what the "HF" amateurs think, especially in larger urban areas. We're certainly busy on VHF here. State College is considered the "smallest metropolitan area in the country...8^) Those who operate above 30 MHz should never be thought of or even considered as "second-class" amateurs of the "shack on a belt" category. Absolutely. I've often thought that there was a natural divide between HF and VHF+. Disregarding 6 meters, which is kind of a mishmash, it can almost be two different hobbies. I gravitate toward HF myself, but there is cool stuff happening at VHF and above. And so what if a Hams hobby is confined to "the repeater" anyhow? I have personally seen a surge of new Hams in our area. We've been having a 2 percent growth in our area since *before* the testing change, and assuming that tonights testing is successful, 2 new generals and a Technician will be added to the ranks this evening. Those new guys don't know a thing about what the Honeydo hams were doing ten years ago, and don't particularly care either. They have become interested in Ham radio, and we've encouraged them every step of the way. We've been selling the sizzle. There's a problem with using anecdotal evidence: It is too limited to apply to the national scene. Changes in licensing patterns FOR the national area can only be derived from national licensing information. I can say my 91352 ZIP area has 78 hams with over 2/3 of those at Tech or Tech-Plus category but it means little for a national amateur radio condition. Yes, at my test session on 25 Feb 07 over half were there to get or to upgrade from Technician licenses. Doesn't mean much to looking at the overall national scene. Our situation is truly a "single data point". My thoughts on that are that we are working hard to prove that with an inclusive atmosphere (critical) and selling that sizzle, we seem to be making it work. There are so many facets to Ham radio - Experimentation, Olde tyme radio, voice, digital, simple OOK Morse comms. Public service, contesting, DX'ing, homebrewing, SWD radio, Offroading comms, and on and on. the ARS should almost be selling itself. And the serendipitious finds it's way into the picture too. I never would have thought that I would get into hollow state technology, as I am heavily into the latest technology too. Go figure! My main point is that with good representatives, Ham radio shouldn't be a hard sell. BTW, as to Dee Flint's other comment in this thread, the "pros" in electronics HAVE been informed of the code test elimination since December, 2006. EDN and Electronic Design, both industry trades of wide distribution, and SPECTRUM, the membership magazine of the IEEE had news of that prior to 23 Feb 07. There were brief mentions of it in various Pentron industry trade news, even the occasional newspaper "filler" story around the country. It wasn't known just to already-licensed radio amateurs but to a larger segment of the electronics-oriented public. Knowledge that Ham radio "exists" is nice, I suppose. Even better would be that people understand that they might want to get involved. Just one example might be APRS. Although I find it a little creepy, helicoptering parents might find it interesting to know where their offspring are. I'm pretty convinced that a PSK31 enabled 2 meter "texter" radio would be popular among high schoolers and even older hams. Something like that should have been available some years ago. You could even combine it all into one unit. This isn't rocket science, just pipe dreaming something that might be an interesting element of the hobby. Who says that we all have to be doing the same thing? - 73 de Mike KB3EIA - |
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