[Elecraft] Reaching across the chronological divide

[Dave Cole]

As an info point relating to age of new hams:

I am on our VE team here in Oregon, we put through several hundred folks 
a year, maybe even 500 to 1000.  Most people that are new to ham radio 
here, are between 25 and 35, with a tilt toward 40...  Very narrow range.

73, and thanks,
Dave (NK7Z)
https://www.nk7z.net
ARRL Volunteer Examiner
ARRL Technical Specialist
ARRL Asst. Director, NW Division, Technical Resources

On 12/14/19 12:13 PM, Douglas Zwiebel wrote:
> I was caught off guard by Wayne's post.  What was he trying to say?
> 
> Was he trying to say why the K3 is going away and now we have the K4's?
> Maybe.  It's prettier and more likely to attract the younger crowd based on
> looks?  Could be, but that price?  Nope.
> 
> I got interested in ham radio when a friend in the 7th grade got his
> license...or maybe it was 8th grade.  I thought it was "cool" that he was
> talking with stations in other states that were not next door to our state
> (NJ).  One day, my mom drove me over and I caught him working DX (Europe).
> Wow.  That did it for me.  It was like magic.  And Morse code, difficult as
> it may have been to learn, was another aspect of the magic.
> 
> After my General class came in the mail, I swore off CW.  Good bye
> forever.  I spent the first couple years working DX, building up my totals
> (on mostly SSB, but even AM back then.  I still remember working ZD3E on
> 10m AM).  But pretty quickly (relative term), I ran out of stuff to work.
> Where was all the "good" DX?  On CW!  So back I went...and loaded up my log
> with "good" DX, especially the deep Asian Soviet states.  I just loved
> their CW tone (not clean).
> 
> And one day, I happened to run into a DX contest.  This was like a year's
> worth of DXing rolled up into 1 day (I didn't know the contest ran for 48
> hours).  It was heaven.  And that started me on contesting.
> 
> I agree with the comments that contesting is growing.  It is!  See, for
> example, https://cqww.com/stats.htm
> 
> What happened in the 21st century?  Nobody knows for sure, but it was big
> (at least for contesting).
> 
> I also agree with the comment that not everybody contests for the entire
> contest.  Hardly!   See
> https://cqww.com/blog/operating-time-for-single-operator-entries/
> This is a bit dated, but since I am the one who does this calculation, I
> can tell you that i continues even today.  Most guy give out points...not
> trying to win.
> 
> Most entrants (not participants, but actual entrants) only operate a total
> of 15 hours or less.  That's like 3 hours in the morning and 4 hours in
> evening on Sat and Sun.  Not much really.  But for today's active kids, who
> has time to devote to contesting when they can be gaming?  Most gaming is
> completed in short bursts of time.  Same with social media.  With
> contesting, well, you gotta wait until it's over at 2359z Sunday.  And then
> it takes a long time to get anything close to real results.  Long time =
> weeks to get the raw scores (which is a GIANT improvement over the old
> days).
> 
> Now a real marketing question.  Does it matter if the newbies to ham radio
> are teenagers?  So what if the newbies are all "new retirees?" I don't know
> if that is true, but for me, inflow is inflow.  I know lots of guys my age
> who wanted to be a ham when they were my age when I got my license, but
> didn't, but now still do and are....finally getting their ticket.  AND,
> they have more $$ to spend than some 13 year old (like I and my friend were
> when we got interested).  How does "age of entry" = maintenance of the
> population?  Whatever.
> 
> Enough rambling, cuz that's all I have to say.  I have the next 2 weeks off
> from work and I'm catching up on "other" radio stuff, like this reflector.
> 
> de Doug KR2Q
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