[CW] Top 25 Things Vanishing: Amateur Radio

[David Ring]

There is an interesting article at the bottom of this message about
the top 25 things that are vanishing from the USA and Amateur Radio is
one of them.  It is a good read.

It is ironic that when Morse vanished from Amateur Radio examinations
and that the examinations became an exercise in memory but not
understanding that Amateur Radio started to decline.  It is probably a
coincidence, but it is a bittersweet one for me.  Sometimes when
things are a challange they mean something when you accomplish it.
Also since 1999, a FCC commercial license wasn't a ticket to making
money in the USA so interest in FCC radio licenses has dropped.

Let's look at 2002 and 2003 and see what happened.

Amateur Licenses in USA peaked in April 2003 to 687,860, and the
average age was at its lowest just prior to that in December 2002 at
56.39 years.

In June 2008 we have Amateur Licenses of   and average age of 68.11 years.

That's less than six years later - so the average of 56.39 should go
to 62.39 if no younger people came into the hobby, but instead it has
gone up six years additional to 68.11 years!  Twice as much as it
would be if things stood still.

(Thanks to Joe Speroni AH0A for the statistics).
http://www.ah0a.org/FCC/index.html

Below is the article.

73
David N1EA

Top 25 things vanishing from America: #16 -- Ham radio
http://www.walletpop.com/2008/07/17/top-25-things-vanishing-from-america-16-ham-radio/

Tom Barlow
Jul 17th 2008 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Technology

This series explores aspects of America that may soon be just a memory
-- some to be missed, some gladly left behind. From the least
impactful to the most, here are 25 bits of vanishing America.

An easy way to prolong a disaster is to have the respondents use
dozens of different, incompatible communications systems, or operate
them with no protocol. Yes, I'm thinking about Katrina. I'm also
thinking about a vanishing American treasure, the amateur radio
operator. In the past five years alone, the number of people holding
active licenses has dropped by 50,000, even though Morse Code is not
longer a requirement.

Many think of a ham radio operator as a tubes-and-wires geek, and
there is a certain truth to that stereotype, although today's ham is
more likely to be computer-savvy and involved in cutting-edge
technologies. However, from my personal experience, I know them to be
among our nation's best trained and most capable respondents to
disasters. In the hands of the amateur radio volunteers, disaster
communications become orderly and prioritized, as they employ the
protocols and training received in gaining their licenses. As director
of one of the nation's largest week-long bicycle tours, I watched the
ham community deal with countless challenges with imagination and
expertise, whether it was assembling a portable tower and repeater in
the field, coordinating emergency medical transport, or organizing the
search for a lost child. I saw them sit for countless hours patiently
looking out for the safety of thousands of people that would never
know of their efforts.

As cell phones and the Internet siphon off much of what once attracted
people to amateur radio, the nation's ham radio population is graying
rapidly. Given the cash value of the radio bands allocated to amateur
radio, there will be relentless pressure on the government to take
back those bands so they can be sold. All these elements speak to a
long, slow diminishment of a pastime that began with Marconi.

When amateur radio as we know it disappears, it won't be the radios
we'll miss. We'll miss the operators. 73's to a national treasure.

Tom Barlow, N8NLO
=30=