As an info point relating to age of new hams:
I am on our VE team here in Oregon, we put through several hundred folks
a year, maybe even 500 to 1000. Most people that are new to ham radio
here, are between 25 and 35, with a tilt toward 40... Very narrow range.
73, and thanks,
Dave (NK7Z)
https://www.nk7z.net
ARRL Volunteer Examiner
ARRL Technical Specialist
ARRL Asst. Director, NW Division, Technical Resources
On 12/14/19 12:13 PM, Douglas Zwiebel wrote:
I was caught off guard by Wayne's post. What was he trying to say?
Was he trying to say why the K3 is going away and now we have the K4's?
Maybe. It's prettier and more likely to attract the younger crowd based on
looks? Could be, but that price? Nope.
I got interested in ham radio when a friend in the 7th grade got his
license...or maybe it was 8th grade. I thought it was "cool" that he was
talking with stations in other states that were not next door to our state
(NJ). One day, my mom drove me over and I caught him working DX (Europe).
Wow. That did it for me. It was like magic. And Morse code, difficult as
it may have been to learn, was another aspect of the magic.
After my General class came in the mail, I swore off CW. Good bye
forever. I spent the first couple years working DX, building up my totals
(on mostly SSB, but even AM back then. I still remember working ZD3E on
10m AM). But pretty quickly (relative term), I ran out of stuff to work.
Where was all the "good" DX? On CW! So back I went...and loaded up my log
with "good" DX, especially the deep Asian Soviet states. I just loved
their CW tone (not clean).
And one day, I happened to run into a DX contest. This was like a year's
worth of DXing rolled up into 1 day (I didn't know the contest ran for 48
hours). It was heaven. And that started me on contesting.
I agree with the comments that contesting is growing. It is! See, for
example, https://cqww.com/stats.htm
What happened in the 21st century? Nobody knows for sure, but it was big
(at least for contesting).
I also agree with the comment that not everybody contests for the entire
contest. Hardly! See
https://cqww.com/blog/operating-time-for-single-operator-entries/
This is a bit dated, but since I am the one who does this calculation, I
can tell you that i continues even today. Most guy give out points...not
trying to win.
Most entrants (not participants, but actual entrants) only operate a total
of 15 hours or less. That's like 3 hours in the morning and 4 hours in
evening on Sat and Sun. Not much really. But for today's active kids, who
has time to devote to contesting when they can be gaming? Most gaming is
completed in short bursts of time. Same with social media. With
contesting, well, you gotta wait until it's over at 2359z Sunday. And then
it takes a long time to get anything close to real results. Long time =
weeks to get the raw scores (which is a GIANT improvement over the old
days).
Now a real marketing question. Does it matter if the newbies to ham radio
are teenagers? So what if the newbies are all "new retirees?" I don't know
if that is true, but for me, inflow is inflow. I know lots of guys my age
who wanted to be a ham when they were my age when I got my license, but
didn't, but now still do and are....finally getting their ticket. AND,
they have more $$ to spend than some 13 year old (like I and my friend were
when we got interested). How does "age of entry" = maintenance of the
population? Whatever.
Enough rambling, cuz that's all I have to say. I have the next 2 weeks off
from work and I'm catching up on "other" radio stuff, like this reflector.
de Doug KR2Q
______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net
This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Message delivered to d...@nk7z.net
______________________________________________________________
Elecraft mailing list
Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net
This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
