While I fully agree that Amateur Radio is a national treasure, I disagree with many of those who would eulogize it prematurely. Amateur Radio is alive and well and far more active than ever before. A few specifics:

The AHOA site shows 684,000 hams in 2003 and 658,000 for 2008. That's a drop of 26k, -half of the 50k claimed above. But also look deeper and note the numbers of higher class licensees. There's a much greater percentage of hams going beyond just the entry levels of learning. So while there's slightly fewer hams, they are much more active hams.

As for the age of hams, I can find no citation for the claims made. The FCC does not keep birthdates or age information.
There's a lot of twenty-something people becoming Amateur Radio operators to join in the emergency response work that the Amateur Radio Emergency Service does throughout the country. Without hard data, it's anecdotal either way.

But probably most important is that even now, in the lowest part of a very low sunspot cycle, Amateur Radio is active and engaging. Hams are being included in more and more emergency planning ( -and needed in those roles too!), contest activity is up, there's new digital capabilities announced almost weekly.

Maybe the majority of the cellphone generation is content being simple "users" of a technology. But there will always be those other bright, curious people who want to open the box and see what makes it work. Amateur Radio is for those people who not only want to use a technology, but to understand it and even develop it further. It never was a mainstream pastime. But the technological developments hams have devised in every decade have changed mainstream communications for us all. They're far from "vanishing."

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THE ONLY THING DIEING IS MY BANK ACCOUNT FROM BUYING NEW OVER PRICED AMATEUR EQUIPMENT THE ONLY THING KILLING HAM RADIO IS THE OUT RAGIOUS PRICES ON EQUIPMENT 1500+ FOR A 600 WATT SOLID STATE LINEAR AMP GIVE ME A BREAK

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How can anyone rightly say that amateur radio is dying off when from 2006 to June of 2008, there were more than 72,000 new licenses earned by people of all ages and backgrounds around the United States?

As for the "graying" effect, when I visited the world's largest gathering of amateurs this past May in Dayton, OH, I saw a booth dedicated to those who were under 18 and were interested in the radio arts. I didn't say licensed--just interested. The tables were packed all day long and the youth were smiling, visiting with their peers, discussing the things that appealed to them and doing activities they deemed "fun and informative".

Maybe this writer has never reached out to a younger person to show them the magic that is still being worked by amateur radio and help mentor them to being an active operator.

I am an instructor and in all but one of my classes, I have had kids ranging from elementary to high school in the classes. (The one class without kids was a special session for a church men's group)

Amateur radio is a lot like a garden--you need to spread the seed and tend to the sprouts to keep it growing. If ham radio is dying in your little piece of the Earth, it is probably from neglect and letting the weeds get the better of your patch.

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Hmmmm, was somebody sleeping during Field Day? Every band that I tried was jammed pack full of operators.

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Your obituary is indeed premature. Ham radio is alive and well. However it has changed and continues to change and there lies its strength. Ham radio of today is hard to recognize from that of years ago. It is, and always has been, on the cutting edge of technology.
The 'tubes-and-wires geek' you talk about is still around but has evolved into the transistor geek, the integrated circuit geek, the computer geek and is now building with surface mounted components that require magnifying glasses and special soldering techniques for assembly.State of the art all the way.
Today's ham is bouncing signals off the moon, and has been for at least twenty years, talking to astronauts while they are in space, operating stations, remotely, around the world, communicating with signals that are too faint to be heard thru a pair of earphones and by the time you read this, much more.
The availability of the computer may have siphoned some hams from our ranks but for savey hams the computer has become a partner and increased the possibilities of both technologies.
Ham radio is here to stay and always will be. It just may be difficult to identify if you are only looking for the old 'brass pounder'.

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Yes it's true that young people have more venues for electronics and communications in these days of high speed internet access and cell phones, but those who want to learn the technical side of how things actually work will always turn to Amateur Radio.
Amateur Radio offers something for everyone. Whether you like to work with your hands and design antennas or build your own transmitter or receiver, or engage in emergency communications, digital networking, etc, it has always been the training ground for new developments in electronics.

I think it's not going through a slow death, as some have predicted, but rather a evolution, just like the times we are in. Constantly evolving. The Ham of 25 or 50 years ago would be astounded to see how we have progressed and the new opportunities for those who are active in the hobby.

Amateur Radio is a lot more than a hobby, but rather a national resource of people trained in the art of radio communication and electronics. We don't do it because we're being paid to doso, but because we have the passion to further the state of the art. That's what seperates the men from the boys!

Yes, I agree that Amateur Radios' greatest resources are it's people. We must always be vigilant of those who will try to put commercial interests above the interest of that of the people who volunteer their skills and sometimes even risk their lives for the public good.

Mod-U-later,
"Vortex Joe" N3IBX

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I used the same site at the author, http://www.ah0a.org. I reach a far different conclusion. I plotted the US ham population vs time on a graph I placed at http://p1k.arrl.org/~ehare/ham_population.bmp. It shows that the all-time high number of licensees was 687,860 in 2003. At the close of last month, there were 658,711 licensed hams in the US. This is a decline of 4.2%, hardly the mass extinction that this author tried to portary.

As one looks at the graph, there have been ups and down in the number of licensed hams over the decades, and each of them has probably been accompanied by the predictions of doom and gloom. Every single one of those predictions has not turned out to be true.

There are a few confounding factors. At one point, the FCC went from a 5-year renewal to a 10-year renewal, so there was a period of time in which zero licensed expired. At the end of ten years, expirations started again. I have estimated this effect with an additional line on the graph. The real decline in Amateur Radio is probably closer to 2-3% when the 10-year effect is properly considered.

Before the Internet, there were some that wanted to use ham radio just as a communications tool. Today, many of those people use the Internet, where they can communicate with others around the world. That segment of ham radio is probably no longer active. But for ham radio to be holding its own, increasing slightly over the past months, speaks to its overall growth, at least of those hams that want to use Amateur Radio for technical experimentation or emergency communications, or just to use radio to communicate.

Some would say that the hayday of Amateur Radio was the late 1960s to early 1970s. In 1970, there were about 280,000 hams. The "decline" since that era is an increase of about 380,000 people. The decline since 1980 has been an increase of 270,000 people and the decline since 1990 has been an increase of 195,000 people. Surely this is more significant than a decrease of a few percent over the maximum created by the 10-year renewal effect.

As I listen to the ham bands, I don't hear it dying. I hear active, vibrant contacts bewteen people with common interests. With changes to the licensing structure and the elimination of Morse code as a testing requirement, I expect to see continued growth.

Ed Hare, W1RFI@arrl.org, ARRL Laboratory

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Whoever compiled this listing really struck out on Number 16. Reports on the imminent death of Amateur Radio are quite incorrect. Actually, there's never been a better or more exciting time to become a ham radio operator than right now present day. You know, we hams not only had a large hand in creating the present-day digital world you claim is making Amateur Radio disappear, but we were also early adopters of it for our own radio interests. Take PSK31 for example, which non hams know nothing about but would recognize as a form of text messaging. A ham developed it over ten years ago and it's caught on like wildfire. With a $100 add on radio card that plugs into the sound port on your laptop and a cheap wire antenna, you can text message the whole world without monthly fees, hot spot issues, etc., and make contact with the friendliest and sharpest bunch of people to be found anywhere. Did I mention that the software to do this is free?

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Why would anyone base "facts" on the ah0a.org site???

Obviously the numbers given there are bogus, and not to be trusted.

Want proof?

Look at the columns for Advanced and Novice class.

Those numbers are increasing according to this site.

Last I knew, no new Advanced or Novice licenses have been issued for quite some time.

And.... how many of those callsigns are clubs, and/or repeaters?


No actual facts = no actual information.

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After a 40 year lay off, I came back to Ham Radio. It has changed alot, but high prices is not one of them. Try buying an aircraft radio with limited function, limited ability and 5 watts output, it will only set you back about ten grand, plus another five (grand not dollars) to install. Ham radio seems cheap after aviation. We aren't going away, we maturing, but living.

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I appreciate all the comments; well-reasoned, as I would have expected from the ham community. As one so accurately pointed out, I'm only a lowly tech and willing to learn. As for the aging of the ham population, it is true that data is not available from the FCC, but this does not refute my belief, based on the people I've met, that the field is graying. I've seen local clubs no longer able to field volunteers for events or hold Field Day. Given that licenses come up for renewal so infrequently, the evidence in support or contrary to this article could be a long time in coming.
I hope that the field is as healthy as you all describe.

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I think what may well be telling about this author's perspective is his own apparent activity level, or lack thereof.

As was pointed out to me recently - though by no means conclusive - the number of 'lookups' on a ham's call at such sites as qrz.com can be indicative of their activity level. Such curiosity by others tends to indicate all facets of a ham's participation - not just 'on the air'.

The author of this 'faux-eulogy' has a relatively low number of lookups.

Draw your own conclusions.

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Our club is actually experiencing a growth . We have people calling us and emailing us asking when the next class or training session will be . It is directly related to the amount of active hams in your area .
Both our Emergency Preparedness Director and Rural Fire Director are now hams , because it assures them of good communications , even in worst case scenarios.
We know first hand the value of ham radio in a disaster , having been at the center of DR # 1711 last year .(Montgomery County Kansas)
100 % of the communications from Area Command in this disaster were handled by ham radio operators.
Using RACES as the organization of choice in our county , allows the Emergency Manager to see that all of the members are fully trained in the ICS and NIMS .

Charles Vest ( W5COV )

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Ham radio is NOT on it's way out for a LONG TIME.As HAMS our radio's are like our guns,"you can have them when you pry our dead fingers from them because we will be operating SOMEWHERE if were breathing"! Glad someone explained why I have so many lookups on QRZ.com (I am on the air EVERY day) I thought everyone just loved hearing me say, W4KVW "Wanted 4 Kissing Vanna White" when I sign off(LOL) & they wanted to see if VANNA was pictured with me on my QRZ.com bio page.haha

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As others have pointed out, the actual US license numbers do not bear out the claim of 50,000 licenses being lost in the past 5 years.

It may appear to the casual observer that hams are getting "grayer", but in fact the entire US population is doing that. The median age of US residents, as measured by the census,
keeps going up. As of 2000 it was a bit over 39 years. The FCC database has birthdate info on some hams but not all, so it's not a reliable source of age info.

Some may say "just look around at any ham radio gathering", but the fact is that such gatherings are not a cross-section of the amateur population, because a lot of hams with families, jobs, school, etc., don't go to many of them.

I've been a ham for almost 41 years and every few years the same imminent death of ham radio has been predicted - and all that has happened in all those years is growth, expansion, new technologies and more fun things to do.

73 de Jim, N2EY

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"When all else fails, Amateur Radio will be there." All of the new "fancier technologies" such as the Internet, cell phones, trunked public safety communications did not fare so well when Hurricane Andrew hit Homestead and Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Yet Amateur Radio stilll worked and was able to provide much needed communications during and after the disaster.

We hams are self-contained and do not rely on other networks, etc. to provide our communications. We are always on standby ready to step in when needed. Though the amateur radio community is changing, like most of the country, it will be here in the future.

Tom Copley, K4YAZ

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KC8ZGP here! Ham raido will most likely never "fade" away. Not only is it (HAM radio) necessary for emergency communications, civil defense operations, it is also a wonderful hobbie that many families enjoy together. We keep in touch across this land and to our overseas kin via HAM raido. I don't see it going away completely ever. But then again,that's the problem with the world today, give it to me now, and I don't want to do a thing to get it.

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