Dave, Good point! Ham radio doesn't need more people, it needs ACTIVE people! IIRC, there were around 180-200,000 U.S. hams when I was first licensed (1963). However, the bands were full of activity. Most evenings, 80 cw was so crowded that it was difficult to find a hole to call CQ in the 300 kHz we had for cw. Now I might only find one or two CW signals on the band, Even 75m SSB is more empty than occupied. I remember when the 2m repeaters were fully occupied at drive time. Now?
Of course, that 800,000 number is not directly comparable. License terms have doubled so the guy who gets a license and makes a few contacts (or none) remains in the count twice as long as he used to. So I think it's more important to address why we have inactive hams than mto concentrate on recruiting more of the same inactive people. Ken WA8JXM On Sat, Jul 26, 2025 at 6:58 PM David Gilbert via Elecraft < [email protected]> wrote: > > Exactly. > > Trying to talk people into being interested in things we're interested > in for the reasons we're interested in them is a foolish endeavor. > Evangelism is boring and off-putting. The best we can do is describe > what ham radio can offer and let people decide if that has any interest > for them. > > If we have to convince somebody that ham radio is interesting to them, > then it probably isn't and even if they go along it won't last. > > Which brings me to this question: > > Why is it necessary that we talk other people into ham radio in the > first place?? There are supposedly close to 800,000 licensed hams in > the U.S., which is a bigger market and a bigger pool of like minds than > LOTS of other activities. Is there some sort of collective insecurity > complex going on every time this comes up? And it comes up with annoying > frequency on almost every forum. > > Dave AB7E > > > > On 7/26/2025 2:27 PM, Fred Jensen via Elecraft wrote: > > They almost all view ham radio from a utilitarian perspective, not as > > a hobby ... they have hobbies and interests. Probably the largest > > non-work interests were in the outdoors. > > ______________________________________________________________ > Elecraft mailing list > Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft > Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm > Post: mailto:[email protected] > > This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net > Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html > Message delivered to [email protected] ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to [email protected]
