Thing one - there never will be a huge number of hams.

Thing two - I've seen firsthand the damage that the grouchy olde tymers
can do. They chase people away. Old timers with an attitude are now the
greatest danger to Ham radio.

Putting together a station is fun.

Talking around the world without a structure is fun.

Most people don't realize how much infrastructure it takes to have flame
wars on newsgroups via the Internet. :-) They need to understand that
before they can appreciate that hams can talk to other hams worldwide
without any infrastructure other than their own radios and antennas.

Learning about all that Radio encompasses is fun.

Talking with friends old and new about radio is fun

Fun, fun, fun, fun for everyone!


Listening to someone bemoan CB'ers, nickle extras, and how their
prowess in CW makes them superior, how Hams really had it hard in the
old days, any idiot can become a ham nowadays, next thing yaknow, they
will be giving licenses away on boxes of cereal type hams, and on and on
is not fun.


"No kids, no lids, and no space cadets!"....

The ARRL should place a few ads in CB magazines to announce the no code
HF licenses. Not that we would want "freebander" style activity to leak
into the ham bands, but some "freebanders" may want to "repent" and get
into legal radio (sure, it sounds hokey, but what the hell...). But it
needs to be clear that they must quit the "freeband" once they become
hams. And maybe some elmers can help them convert that "lynaear" into a
clean and proper linear for 10m....