In the United States, the ARRL, as the national association for hams, is at the forefront, and with more than 160,000 members it is the largest group of radio amateurs in the world. And it will be hard to argue that spectrum reserved for amateur use and experimentation should not be sold off to commercial users if hardly any amateurs are taking advantage of it.īefore we look to the future, let's examine the current state of play. The world is changing the amount of spectrum is not. No matter where they land on these battle lines, however, everyone understands one fact. And emerging digital technologies are exacerbating these divides: Some hams see them as the future of amateur radio, while others grouse that they are eviscerating some of the best things about it. Like any large population, ham enthusiasts are no monolith their opinions and outlooks on the decades to come vary widely. This question of how to attract younger operators also reveals deep divides in the ham community about the future of amateur radio. A permanent replacement has not yet been appointed.) (Since speaking with IEEE Spectrum, Michel has left the ARRL. “It's the $60,000 question: How do we get the kids involved?" says Howard Michel, former CEO of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). As these baby boomers age out, the fear is that there are too few young people to sustain the hobby. Federal Communications Commission doesn't track demographic data of operators, but anecdotally, white men in their 60s and 70s make up much of the population. amateur licenses has held at an anemic 1 percent annual growth for the past few years, with about 7,000 new licensees added every year for a total of 755,430 in 2018.
Now, with time taking its toll on the ranks of operators, new technologies offer opportunities to revitalize amateur radio, even if in a form that previous generations might not recognize.
But the rise of the Internet in the 1990s, with its ability to easily connect billions of people, captured the attention of many potential hams. Electronic engineering has benefited tremendously from their activity, from the level of the individual engineer to the entire field. Will the amateur airwaves fall silent? Since the dawn of radio, amateur operators-hams-have transmitted on tenaciously guarded slices of spectrum. Field Day is ham radio's largest on-air annual event and demonstration. John Anderson (AJ7M), from Marysville, Washington on the air from home for the 2020 ARRL Field Day event, held June 27-28.
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