You have probably seen the statement: “ham radio is dying”. Is it really dying or just changing? I am a “baby boomer”; I was introduced to the hobby by my grandfather who presented me with a crystal set when I was 9 years old. I spent many, many years as an SWL before getting licensed. While still a teenager I became a solder smoke addict as I built my own radio projects using good old-fashioned tubes and then some with those newfangled devices called transistors. While growing up, and before HOAs were a thing, I had my own antenna restriction authority – my mother. But I carried on. My personal opinion: yes ham radio has evolved to the point where I almost don’t recognize it any more. Why?
Did we make it too easy?
Here in Canada the authorities have almost reached the point of giving away ham radio licenses in packs of breakfast cereal. Ok, I exaggerate – just a little. We have three classes of license: Basic (VHF/UHF only), Basic with Honours (full spectrum HF privileges) and Advanced (higher power limit, able to own a repeater). A new ham can become licensed with full spectrum HF privileges by passing a 100 question multiple choice test with a score of at least 80%. And, in Canada, licenses are granted for life without any fee whatsoever,
I call myself a new ham – I have been licensed for just under a quarter of a century. Why new? Because, after passing my Basic exam, I earned my HF ticket by passing a Morse Code test at 5 words per minute. That was in the days before the “Basic with Honours” license class was made available. I earned my Basic ticket the cheap and easy way, by self-study and by rehearsing the written exam using online “practice exams”. I had already been passionate about radio technology for several decades and had worked as an electronics engineer for years so it was very easy for me.
My Advanced license exam was even easier. There were only 50 multiple choice questions. Once again I self-studied and took multiple “practice exams” until I was consistently scoring 100%. I took the test at a hamfest and, to the examiner’s astonishment, I scored 100%. But I actually felt a sense of guilt that I had qualified for the highest level of license with so little effort.
I remember the interview for my first job as an electronic design engineer. The recruiter was not going to make it easy. Maintaining a blank expression on his face he pushed a pencil and paper across the desk and said “draw a circuit diagram for an oscillator”. As an electronic hobbyist I had recently built an astable multivibrator that alternately lit two flashlight bulbs. Gathering my thoughts for a moment I tried to recall the circuit I had built. I sketched what I remembered and it was close enough to satisfy the man who became my new boss; I was hired.
Now imagine if that same kind of test was required to earn an amateur radio license – as it once was – how many would pass? Would our hobby have any appeal at all to people who are not already passionate about radio? And, if so, would that be a good thing or a bad thing? Can we keep the hobby alive by making it ever easier to get licensed?
To answer that question we need to examine the reasons people want to get into ham radio. Here are the main reasons I can think of:
- Ham radio is the original social medium. Some people get into the hobby to rag chew with friends old and new.
- When all else fails there is ham radio. Many people are motivated by the idea of helping others during times of emergency.
- Radio is an experimental science. There remains much to be discovered about the science of radio and emerging radio technologies.
- Skills improvement. Some people enjoy challenging themselves to learn more, to learn new skills and improve skills they already have.
I am sure there are other motivations but let’s examine these four. Before we do let’s consider one very important fact: the radio spectrum is limited and very valuable. Commercial interests are willing to pay millions of dollars for a slice of the spectrum. Amateur radio operators get generous slices of that limited spectrum entirely free. Why are the authorities willing to do that? A good answer can be obtained by examining the US FCC’s Part 97.1 rules for the “Amateur Radio Service” – and remember that terminology, we’ll come back to it later.
“The rules and regulations in this part are designed to provide an amateur radio service having a fundamental purpose as expressed in the following principles:
- (a) Recognition and enhancement of the value of the amateur service to the public as a voluntary noncommercial communication service, particularly with respect to providing emergency communications.
- (b) Continuation and extension of the amateur’s proven ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art.
- (c) Encouragement and improvement of the amateur service through rules which provide for advancing skills in both the communication and technical phases of the art.
- (d) Expansion of the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts.
- (e) Continuation and extension of the amateur’s unique ability to enhance international goodwill.”
Clearly the government sees the Amateur Radio Service as a voluntary resource available to assist, as required, in times of emergency. It is also expected that we will strive to continuously improve our skills and contribute to the advancement of radio technology. Nowhere does Part 97 endorse using spectrum purely as a social medium. Confession: I enjoy a weekly rag chew on 80m CW with a couple of friends. A message to all fellow rag chewers: let’s make sure we don’t focus too much on the social side of the hobby.
Let’s examine Part 97.1 (d) for a moment:
“Expansion of the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts.”
Is this compatible with making it ever easier to become licensed? Maybe driving to an FCC office, sitting in front of an examiner and being asked to draw circuit diagrams makes candidates better qualified to meet the requirements of Part 97.1 (d) than learning the question bank answers and regurgitating them during a multiple choice written test. Even if we succeed in boosting the number of new licenses issued by lowering the requirements, will the new recruits stay in the hobby if they are don’t have radio in their DNA?
Can we satisfy Part 97.1 (d) by recruiting enough new ham radio licensees in the hope that, among the new licensees, there will be a sufficient percentage of genuine techies to meet the FCC’s requirement of “expanding the reservoir”? That seems to be the strategy nowadays; let us hope it works.
Ham radio is a very broad hobby with room for all kinds of operators with a diverse range of interests. While I agree with that sentiment it would be wise to continuously look over our collective shoulder because we should not take our present access to high value spectrum for granted. Governments are always hungry for money and commercial interests are always hungry for spectrum. The world is changing rapidly and one day, if we are not careful, that could sneak up and bite us on the butt.
Help support HamRadioOutsidetheBox
No “tip-jar”, “buy me a coffee”, Patreon, or Amazon links here. I enjoy my hobby and I enjoy writing about it. If you would like to support this blog please follow/subscribe using the link at the bottom of my home page, or like, comment (links at the bottom of each post), repost or share links to my posts on social media. If you would like to email me directly you will find my email address on my QRZ.com page. Thank you!
The following copyright notice applies to all content on this blog.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Discover more from Ham Radio Outside the Box
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Ham Radio Outside the Box 
Congratulations, that’s what I think too. 73!
Atila, TA1DX
LikeLike
Thanks for the feedback Atila!
LikeLiked by 1 person
The question is no longer “IF” amateur radio is dying. Anyone still debating this question is living in La-La Land.
The answer is available to anyone with two eyes. Take a peek at the January, 2023 QST for the answer. 25 hams and exactly one under the age of 40. If you belong to a club you must surely have noticed declining and aging membership.
Once those old timers die or quit the repeaters will go (completely) silent. We will eventually arrive at some very low steady-state participation numbers, maybe 30-40 thousand in the US.
I, for one, am not renewing my ARRL membership. $59 just to have an ARRL.org email address? Or $84 for the magazine that’s way above my head? Sorry. Operator advocacy…we don’t deserve the bandwidth we already have, so not interested.
Absolutely nobody listens to reasonable observations like these. I have emailed ARRL a dozen times and don’t even get a response.
The secret to sustainable membership is to engage young people but ARRL barely does that. US Chess faced a similar demographic cliff 30 years ago and that’s how they turned things around, but ARRL doesn’t seem to be interested.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I agree about declining club membership. I have been a member of 3 clubs over the years. 2 of them are in serious decline with more social than actual radio activity. At the same time the online “clubs” I belong to seem to be growing steadily.
LikeLike
Yes indeed. Online communities may save ham radio the way online commentary and reporting are saving journalism.
The main problem with online forums is there are way too many jerks who hang out and troll those communities. A leading Youtube ham guy recently pointed this out and announced he is quitting radio-related online groups.
I quit QRZ for the same reason. Too many Internet Radio Ninjas opinionated way beyond their actual expertise.
LikeLike
Is #hamRadio changing? Of course!
Our hobby has become much broader.
Correspondingly, what a typical ham tends to know necessarily has become both broader, but also more shallow during the last, say, 50 years.
I intend to post some examples of what has become broader, one per day, under #hamRadioBreadth. Let's see how long I last.
If you want to publish your favorite example under the same hashtag: You're warmly invited!
@hamradiooutsidethebox.ca
@AJW
LikeLike
Remote Reply
Original Comment URL
Your Profile
#hamRadioBreadth example: Receivers.
In the 1960s, three types of receivers were common: Regenerative, super-regen, superhet.
Back then, many hams could write basic circuit diagrams of either of the three from memory.
Today? From top of my head: Superhet with low or high IF, direct conversion without or with sideband surpression.
Several different ways turn SSB into audio.
On top of that, the exiting world of DSP: Sampling at HF, some IF, with or without IQ. Many fun DSP algorithms follow.
LikeLike
Remote Reply
Original Comment URL
Your Profile
One of my projects when I was a teenager was a regenerative receiver. When I learned how to adjust it to oscillate and broadcast wideband RF I got into trouble with my mother who was trying to listen to her AM broadcast receiver. I was more careful after facing her wrath.
LikeLike
@dj3ei @hamradiooutsidethebox.ca @AJW I got my license by passing the City & Guilds exam in 1989. Even then people were saying the hobby was doomed because they'd made it "too easy" by making it multiple choice.
The thing which gives me pause today is that 144/430 only licenses are an anachronism from the days when being able to get on 2m was seen as a key to joining the community. That's no longer the case, and today 2 and 70 feel almost more like slightly-specialist bands for people who explicitly want to do VHF/UHF stuff rather than a universal "must have". If you really want to encourage people to come into the hobby and stay the important part isn't making the test harder, it's making the offering more attractive.
IMHO the UK's Foundation/Intermediate/Full progression is a great model. it doesn't piddle about granting access to bits and pieces of some bands and none of some others, it has the same allocations as the other classes only with a 25W power limit. Take the next test and you get Intermediate (100W), then one more to Full (1kW). And as anyone knows, you can work the world on 25W or less. Sure, you might have trouble working moonbounce but pretty much everything else is possible. Let people have all the fun right from the start — don't gatekeep the "best bits".
LikeLike
Remote Reply
Original Comment URL
Your Profile
Good observations Mike. I guess the US system of allocating different parts of the spectrum based on license class can lead to confusion. When I am activating a park for POTA most of my contacts are in the US so I maybe should be more careful choosing my frequency so as not to exclude hams who aren’t Extras. Maybe newly licensed hams should be restricted to 5 watts CW/digital, 10 watts SSB, that might help them develop an appreciation for QRP and, who knows, they might just choose to stay QRP.
LikeLike
Good idea Andreas, I am now following #hamRadioBreadth and look forward to your ideas.
LikeLike
Today's #hamRadioBreadth : How do we get our signals around Earth's curvature?
Our original answer was "relaying" (see 2nd "R" in "ARRL"). We today do that in FM relays, in #hamnet microwave links, and most gloriously in hamradio satellites.
~100 years ago, discovery of ionospheric SW reflection was the big boost to our hobby.
Since, we've learned to let our waves bounce back from a falling star's trail, aurora borealis, air planes, rain clouds, the moon, even Venus.
It's fun to contemplate!
LikeLike
Remote Reply
Original Comment URL
Your Profile
Today's #hamRadioBreadth: Gamification.
Hunting and gathering is a human trait. Many hams collect countries reached. Verified 100 countries (and ~$45) get you the venerable DXCC certificate to adorn your shack.
Today, similar certificates can be had for contacts with stations on islands, hill tops, near mills, castles, lighthouses (and occasionally even toilets), or special event stations "X years YZ".
I don't hunt much myself, but enjoy the demand when operating from a collectible hilltop.
LikeLike
Today's #hamRadioBreadth focuses on mixers: Ubiquitous components to move signals from one frequency to another and make Morse and SSB audible.
For decades, heptodes aka pentagrid tubes or dual-gate FETs were used.
Today, most are switching mixers, with e.g. diodes, FETs, repurposed digital bus switches; in un-, singly, or doubly balanced variety.
Many basic, economic TRX use the NE612 Gilbert cell mixer.
The study of particular mixer's pros and cons is a fascinating rabbit hole to get into!
LikeLike
Today's #hamRadioBreadth looks at the signals we put into the air.
Three successive revolutions have each enabled more: The first, CMOS-based digitization of the 70s eased generation of stable, precise frequencies. This allowed low-bandwidth modes, CCW being an early example.
Since the 90s, PCs+sound cards code and decode whatever fits a 3 kHz SSB bandwidth. A still ongoing explosion of modes resulted.
The current SDR revolution now lifts the bandwidth restriction; see e.g. new packet radio.
LikeLike
Today's #hamRadioBreadth discusses the development of text transfer.
Initially, #MorseCode was it. RTTY and Hell soon followed, originally with specialized machinery. CCW was the first for phenomenal reach.
Now we have Olivia for general far reach, PSK31 for natural "I see what you type as you type it" experience, FT-8 for basic contacts with utter convenience, Vara for email via shortwave, packet for mailbox, and my favorite JS-8 gives me text transfer and "my station can be a mailbox, too".
LikeLike
Today's #hamRadioBreadth looks at ways to prove a QSO happened.
Old-fashioned paper QSL cards can be pretty – and a royal PITA to produce, ship, process.
Today's internet has online services that verify QSOs: Some by national clubs like ARRL or DARC, several offered commercially. Alas, those don't talk to each other. If the sets of services two hams use do not intersect, 🤷.
This needs improvement.
I want a public/private key pair for each ham and signed QSL records accepted by all services.
LikeLike
This idea sounds excellent for cases where proof of QSO is required. For general QSOs some of us now prefer PDF format QSL cards sent via email. Any ideas on how to implement the key pair idea Andreas?
LikeLike
Today's #hamRadioBreadth topic: "Which bands are open?"
Traditionally: If you receive signals, the band is open.
🤔
If all only listen, a band could open and nobody notices. That happens!
The International Beacon Project provides 24×7 TX from strategically chosen locations on the higher shotwave bands on a schedule.
TX. And RBN, WSPRnet, PSKreporter will show where you've been heard.
There's prediction software.
Spaceweatherwoman Skov gladly invites you into the solar physics rabbit hole.
LikeLike
How can a radio amateur toss an idea into the world, so other people notice it?
Via the waves. During local ham club meetings. During conventions. In ham magazine articles. In online talks. In Fediverse videos (youtube if you must). In toots.
#hamRadioBreadth was an idea by myself: One example per day of our hobby becomming broader over time 🧵.
9 examples demonstrate breadth increased in many dimensions.
But the meagre reaction suggests a continuation is neither worth my nor your attention.
LikeLike
A good idea and a good effort Andreas. Sorry but I’ve been ill for over a week and couldn’t interact more.
LikeLike
Well written and to the point
cell phones will fail
LikeLike
Thanks Bruce. I used to belong to an ARES group that received financial support from the county. One day the county administration decided to cancel our support because all their staff had cellphones and saw no further need for ham radio volunteers. Crazy!
LikeLike
Interesting post John. I just discovered this site through another one from KE9V. It doesn’t matter how easy the licensing is going to be. HAMradio has changed and in a few decades it will even more change. It is not the licensing that keep people into this hobby. There will only be a few that keep a lifelong interest. On the other hand if we really get into the doom scenario it is handy if people have and are on the air even with a “easy” obtained license. Well, everythingthing has its advantage and disadvantage. Thanks for your post. 73, Bas PE4BAS
LikeLike
Thanks for the comment Bas. Yes, that is a valid suggestion indeed.
LikeLike
John, I’ve always been bothered by the Government selling RF Spectrum. They don’t own it! Nobody does! It’s nature, like sunlight. Yes there needs to be regulations governing transmitters or there would be total chaos. But to sell RF bands for profit by the government is just wrong. At one time in the beginning of Radio, Hams owned all the bands. Radio experimenters discovered radio and keep on perfecting it till it worked. They found frequencies that would work over greater and greater distances. They made better and better receivers and more and more powerful transmitters. Finally the government took notice of this valuable new tool for communications. I think the 1st major governmental act was to require all ocean going ships to have a radio station and a radio officer onboard of all ships after the Titanic sank. Great idea. But as technology progressed mainly by Ham operators the government noticed the value of radio mainly first by the military. Then came commercial applications of radio usage. AM broadcast. FM broadcast. Television. Police, Fire, EMS ect. Soon the technological usable frequencies were about used up. So the government (FCC) put all Ham operators on what I call “Radio Reservations”, our Ham Bands. We were restricted to narrow slices of the RF spectrum…..And we used to “own” them all! And then came Cell Phones and the government started selling our frequencies for profit. Billions of dollars profit! It just doesn’t seem right. Well that’s my 2 cents worth. David WB4JGG
LikeLike
That’s a really good point David and I totally agree. We have come a long way from the days when government was the servant of the people. On the other hand, somebody has to regulate the use of spectrum or hams wouldn’t be protected from interference. I guess commercial users stand to make big profits and can justify paying huge sums for their bandwidth. Our free use of our small slices of spectrum is the legacy of our contributions to the development of radio technology.
LikeLike