[CTSARA] NY Times article on CQ

[Jon Perelstein]

Just be careful with "how many hams are there" statistics -- they are some
of the so-called "CQ Magazine Big Fibs" ("fib" being a kinder, gentler, more
politically correct word than "LIE")

It's true that 7,000 people got their licenses last year.  That's just fact
and comes from the FCC database.  But ...

1.  We know that a good portion of that is people who get their ham licenses
in conjunction with their Red Cross, CERT, etc. emergency services work.
 These people are not ham hobbyists in any sense of the word -- they don't
get on the air, they don't participate in ham events, they don't even think
of themselves as hams.  In fact, our experience at Red Cross drills tells us
that many of them don't know which end of an HT to hold.  Red Cross claims
that as many as 2,000 of those new hams are Red Cross volunteers; reports
about CERT indicate that as many as 1,000 of those new hams are CERT
volunteers.

2.  We don't know how many hams have left the hobby, either through death or
lack of interest or ....  The FCC does not purge its database, even for
vanity calls.  Thus, I'm two of the nation's more than 700,000 hams -- once
as KB1QBZ and again as WB2RYV.  Of the five others with whom I took my
general in 1965, not a single one is still active.  One is dead and his
license was not renewed in 2002.  Two others are well past the expiration of
their licenses (in one case by 20 years), and the other three renew their
licenses every 10 years but have not been on the air in at least 10 years
(e.g., my friend Rick Hoberman WB2EAT).  Nonetheless, all five are in the
database.

One of the other CQ Magazine Big Fibs is that there are more CW QSOs than
ever before.  They base that statistic on the number of CW QSOs reported for
Field Day and make the assumption that the proportion of CW QSOs on Field
Day is representative of the proportion during the rest of the year --
despite the fact that CW carries a double point multiplier that causes clubs
to press-gang their members into operating CW to get those multipliers.

73s
Jon
WB2RYV