The Service

The ARRL recently reported on an IARU meeting held in late September. Here’s an excerpt:

Participants at the 45th meeting of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) Administrative Council (AC) in late September discussed the organization’s role in advancing amateur radio going forward. The IARU released a summary record of the meeting this week. IARU President Tim Ellam, VE6SH/G4HUA, who chaired the AC meeting in Lima, Peru, observed that the IARU and amateur radio are reaching what he called “an inflection point.” He asserted that amateur radio is changing, but the IARU and its member-societies are not.

Ellam’s remarks prefaced a wide-ranging discussion of the challenges to be overcome if the IARU and amateur radio itself are to remain relevant. After several hours of discussion, AC participants agreed on four top-level headings to identify the challenges that must be faced:

• What is amateur radio?
• The roles of IARU and its member-societies
• Recruitment into amateur radio
• IARU finances

The AC also agreed that it is essential to involve younger people from outside the Council in determining how to address these challenges, and the three IARU regions were asked to identify individuals who “could take ownership of these topics.”

I think that perhaps Ellam hit the nail on the head when he asserts that “amateur radio is changing, but the IARU and its member-societies are not.” The problem, of course is that to work your way up into the leadership of organizations like the ARRL and the IARU, you generally need to have been around a long time and done some noteworthy things for amateur radio. Unfortunately, people who have been successful at something tend to want to promulgate the things that they know and have been successful at, and those things aren’t necessarily the best things for the organization going forward.

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a member of the Rotary Club as well as an amateur radio operator, and I’m always comparing the worlds of Rotary and amateur radio. In many ways, Rotary suffers from the same problem. Rotary leaders are long-time Rotarians, and while they certainly have Rotary’s best interests at heart, I’m not sure that they have the vision needed to propel the organization into the future.

I’m not sure what the best approach is to our common dilemma. Recruiting younger people is always brought forward as a solution, and while this is a step in the right direction, I’m not sure that younger people have enough perspective, and they certainly can’t tackle this on their own. Another issue is having the time and money needed to be able to spend the time working on ham radio or Rotary. IARU and Rotary leaders are volunteers who do this out of love for amateur radio and Rotary.

I’d be interested in hearing what you all have to think about this. Sometimes, I think I’m making too big a deal out of things like this, but if we want amateur radio and Rotary to enjoy a prosperous future, then we really do need to work on these issues. How do we proceed?

For the Ignite talk that I’m doing on November 7, I wanted a to show how the number of amateur radio licensees has grown over the past ten years or so. Unfortunately, the only graph that I could find had data through 2014.

So, with the data from the ARRL VEC, I created the above chart, which includes data through December 2018. Click on the chart to see full-size image.

The results of N8RMA’s 2019 State of the Hobby Survey are now in. As my ICQPodcast co-host, Frank, K4FMH, this isn’t a scientific study, as those who responded to the survey weren’t randomly chosen, but it’s still an interesting survey. Here are a few observations:

• 53% of the respondents are Extra Class operators. Since more than 50% of hams in the U.S. are Tech Class operators, this survey isn’t representative of all hams, but rather active hams. On a related note, respondents report an average of more than 30 years in the hobby. For all licensed hams, that’s got to be a lot less.
• The question, “Which common areas of an amateur radio test are most worrisome to you?” elicited  pretty much the expected response. Technical topics top the list, although I am a bit surprised that antennas and feedlines scored so low.

  

• DXing continues to be the most popular activity, but digital modes is a close second. Of course, the two are, or can be, related. I wonder if digital modes will surpass DXing in future surveys? FT8 is far and away the most popular digital mode.
• Nearly half of CW operators say that a dual-lever paddle is their favorite key, while just over a third are still clinging to their straight keys.
• The questions, “How many hours per month do you spend operating?” and “How many contacts do you make per month?” also point to a survey base of amateur radio operators. The responses, respectively, are 27.64 hours and 67.45 contacts. That’s probably right around where I am, but I think that if I polled our club members, the numbers would be much lower.
• When asked about issues facing the hobby, the two tagged as being most problematic were “operator base ‘aging out'” and “general lack of interest.”

  

I’ll leave the rest for you to discover. I’d be interested in hearing what you may have found interesting or surprising.

On this week’s episode of the ICQPodcast, Frank points out that the ARRL really should be doing this on at least a biennial basis. Not only that, the survey data should be made public, so that more than just the ARRL can interpret it. Without this data, programs designed to help amateur radio operators and improve the hobby have a lot lower chance of success.

Dustin, N8RMA, is once again conducting his State of the Hobby Survey. It will be live during the entire month of March. Dustin writes,

This is the third annual State of the Hobby survey, and I’m as excited as ever to once again embark on this journey. In 2017 I had a 688 responses. In 2018 I moved the question base closer to standard survey semantics and started a blog as the launching point. That year also saw 2919 responses, which was fantastic! This year I’m looking to get an even larger sample size and hopefully get more responses outside of the US. This presents a unique challenge as applicable topics and concerns will vary when you include OUS. I don’t want the survey to be overly generic yet I want to make sure it has a nice global response. It’s a dance.

As always I learn from the survey each year and this is no exception – I’ve taken into account many suggestions and responses and I’m hoping to make the survey better each year. Some notable changes this year; demographics are scaled back. These are good to ask from a survey perspective, however it did not yield much in terms of correlated data and was met with some skepticism. As a results, I’ve cut many of those out.

If you are interested in the results from 2017 and 2018, click one of the links below:

• 2017
• 2018

I would encourage you all to participate. The more responses, the better the data. Once the survey is complete, I will have Dustin on the No Nonsense Amateur Podcast to discuss this year’s results.

This Week in Amateur Radio recently reported on a speech given by ARRL president, Rick Roderick, K5UR, at the 60th annual West Virginia State ARRL convention held August 25th at WVU Jackson’s Mill Conference Center near Weston. Here are some things that he had to say:

Are we even relevant anymore as ham radio operators? Well, let’s see: We’re world communicators. We provide public service. We help in emergencies and disasters. We help save lives. We talk to the jungles of Africa…to the beaches of the South Pacific. We bounce signals off the moon. We talk to astronauts. We promote technology. We do positive things. So absolutely—we are relevant.

We’ve got to accept change and we’ve got to adapt if we’re going to bridge that gap to that next generation. So the question that I have here that I have challenged my colleagues at ARRL with is this: is it time to rebrand ham radio? Maybe we need to rebrand the American Radio Relay League. That’s a pretty profound statement.

Of course, I agree with K5UR on this and said so myself several years ago. Unfortunately, according to the report, he retreated to the same old ideas that the ARRL has been spouting for years:

Well I think we ought to get out there and stir things up. That’s what I think we ought to do. I think you ought to go back and rejuvenate your club. Over the next year, get somebody into ham radio. The second thing I want you to do….I want you to help a ham that needs your help. And the third thing I want you to do is—if you’re not a member of the American Radio Relay League, you need to join today…because you know that whether you like us or not, we’re all you’ve got; ain’t nobody else in Washington DC helping us. I want you to ask yourself this question: don’t you think it’s time to give something back? Now I believe as a group, if we all did that we’ll make a difference in this hobby as we go forward. Be a champion of ham radio. Let’s work together and get it done. Thank you very much.

I’d like to challenge K5UR and the ARRL to really stir things up. There are lots of us out here giving back by teaching classes, conducting exam sessions, and helping hams get on the air. That’s not the problem.

What we need from the ARRL is real leadership, not just talk. Exhorting the troops is only going to go so far. For most hams, amateur radio is only a hobby, and they do what they can. It’s really up to the ARRL to provide the leadership that ties it all together and provide the framework that will allow us all to be successful.

Saying, “Whether you like us or not, we’re all you’ve got; ain’t nobody else in Washington DC helping us” doesn’t really cut it. You have to show people that you’re really making a difference, not just say you are.

Last year, Dustin, N8RMA, started what he calls the State of the Hobby survey. He writes:

This survey started out in 2017 as simple curiosity. While browsing the Amateur Radio subreddit I began to notice several survey posts for highly specific topics. I completed those surveys yet often found myself wondered what the result was. It was then decided to host my own survey, to collect the opinions from the community on topics that I cared about over as many years as I could. My goal was to make those results widely available for the entire community – and perhaps encourage operators to make changes in issues areas or continue doing what seems to be working! If these results bring even small changes, it was worth it.

Well, now the 2018 survey has been completed. I haven’t done an exhaustive analysis of the results, but here are some things that popped out at me as I was perusing the survey:

• There were 2,919 responses, up 224% from a year ago.
• 58% of the responders are 55 years old or older.
• 52% are U.S. Extra Class licensees, 22% are U.S. General Class licensees.
• 62% belong to an amateur radio club.
• The favorite amateur radio activity is DXing (60.4%). This is followed by antenna construction/design (56.4%), digital modes (56.4%), HF ragchewing (48.6%), local ragchewing (40.1%), homebrewing/kit building (39.8%), contesting (36.1%), and emergency communications (36%).
• 40m was the band most frequently operated, closely followed by 20m and 2m.
• When asked to rate the health of the hobby, responders gave it an average of 3.32 out of 5. Those who are club members generally gave this question a higher score.
• Responders also express a slightly higher than average satisfaction (3.14/5) with their “radio governance bodies.” I’m guessing that in the U.S., they’re talking about the ARRL. A similar result was obtained when asked if they were satisfied with their “radio lobbying organization.”
• 44% of responders have engaged in some kind of public service in the past year.
• Yaesu is our favorite radio brand, but not by much over Icom.

Take a look for yourself. I’d be interested in hearing what you have to say about the results.