[Elecraft] THE FUTURE OF OUR HOBBY

[David Gilbert]

I believe that to be likely as well, depending what effect the changing 
demographics have upon frequency allocations.  But we will probably be 
much fewer in number ... the people in the pictures from Dayton look a 
year older each and every year and that can't go on forever.

As I said before, maybe somebody will come up with some truly new 
approaches for ham radio and that will make a difference, but it's 
rather telling that the majority of the posts in this thread reminisce 
about what intrigued us about ham radio 40 or 60 years ago instead of 
what we might do to change it for the future.  The inertia is quite 
considerable.

The number of people who look to ham radio to experiment technically is 
going to be pretty small ... there are many more relevant technologies 
today that will actually lead to an actual job.  The number of people 
who will look to ham radio purely to communicate is trivial ... there 
are far cheaper and more reliable means to do so. I guess there will 
always be a need to have a backup way to communicate if/when the 
apocalypse happens, but that's going to be really niche.

I'm not even convinced that we need to figure out how to save the 
hobby.  It's the nature of the world that things run their course and 
they either adapt to remain useful and/or desirable or they die ... or 
at least diminish to the level of novelty.   I don't see why ham radio 
should be any different.

73,
Dave   AB7E



On 12/14/2019 7:13 PM, KENT TRIMBLE wrote:
> Everything is renewable.
>
> Amateur Radio will never die as long as it offers so many niches where 
> the scientific interests of lay-people can find a home.
>
> 73,
>
> Kent  K9ZTV
>