Whenever I mention to a friend or relative that I am a ham radio operator, the most frequent response I get is, “I didn’t know that they still do that.” My response has always been, “Well, it might surprise you to know that there are nearly 700,000 licensed radio amateurs in the U.S.”
Now, I can drop “nearly” from my reply. According to the statistics at AH0A.Org, the number of licensed radio amateurs topped the 700,000 number for the first time in September. Elwood, WB0OEW, who sent me this factoid, notes, “Also note the number of Techs continues to fall, evidently they are upgrading because there are record numbers of Generals and Extras now too.”
My question is, “Where are all these hams and what are they doing?” I suppose there has been a small uptick in the activity on the HF bands, but VHF and UHF activity is still pretty sparse, at least here in Southeast Michigan.
How is it where you are? Are you noting any increase in activity on the bands/modes that you operate?
Nick, KD8IPE says
In Southern California, there is a devoted group of VHF/UHF people on SSB and probably CW, as well. I made a 2-element quad based on the ARRL Antenna book and listened in. Of course, there’s a bunch of 2m FM as well. Then again, this is SoCal and we have a lot of people here…