On Jun 27, 10:02 pm, AF6AY wrote:


The ARRL is the *ONLY* national organization of radio amateurs.


There are many radio amateur organizations in the US with national
scope. AMSAT, TAPR, NCI, and FISTS are a few which immediately come
to mind.

But none of those is the size of ARRL nor has it's financial strength,
and each of them is of narrower focus. So ARRL remains without anyone
to seriously challenge it's tagline of "The national association for
Amateur Radio".

The model of a single dominant national radio club isn't unique to the
US --- in fact it seems to be the worldwide model. Britain has RSGB,
Germany has DARC, Japan has JARL, Australia has WIA, China has CSRA,
France has REF-Union, Russia has SSR, and so on. These are all large
countries with healthy populations of licensees, but each with only
one "substantial" national radio club.

The only example of a country with two "large" radio clubs was Canada
during the period that both CARF and CRRL were in existence. That
period was quite short lived, and the two clubs merged to become RAC,
so now even Canada has just one large national radio club.

It would be an interesting study to determine why this worldwide model
of a single dominant national radio club has so consistently evolved.

73, de Hans, K0HB