AmateurRadio.com

The new CEO of the ARRL, Howard Michel /WB2ITX spoke at the Ham Radio University event on January 5, 2019. The video below is worth watching to hear Howard’s thoughts on the role of the ARRL. The first 26 minutes are good, but the Q&A session that follows suffers from no audio coverage of the audience.

HRU keynote speaker 1-5-2019 from autocrime1 on Vimeo.

I think Howard has a tough job ahead of him, leading the ARRL through the start of its Second Century, including some long overdue reinvention. He stated that the ARRL has three roles that must remain in balance: A Membership Association, a Business and a 501c3 Charity. This is an important point that not everyone understands.

Howard also talked about the need for a three-way partnership between ARRL members, local clubs and ARRL staff. This partnership is currently weak and needs an overhaul. Lots of opportunity to improve here and tap into the power of volunteer members and clubs.

The slide below shows the lack of success in attracting new hams to become ARRL members. Howard said “something is wrong with the value proposition.”

This next slide drives the point home that the makeup of ARRL members is very different than the general ham population. The slide is hard to see in my graphic but ARRL members are mostly Extra class and General Class licensees and only a small slice of Technicians. The non-members are dominated by Technician licensees. In some ways, this shouldn’t be a surprise…you’d expect ARRL members to more active in the hobby with a tendency toward obtaining higher class licenses. I don’t recall ever seeing this data before.

Howard talked briefly about some work that is being done to analyze the “Spectrum of Hams.” This seems like a clumsy name to me, but it’s really just classic market segmentation work aimed at understanding groups of users. You clump together users or customers that have similar needs so you can do a better job of serving them. Done correctly, this is important and fundamental work required to enable a customer-driven strategy. OK, I said customer driven, in the ARRL context I should probably say member driven. Same idea. Very important and very fundamental.

Now, the resulting model may be wrong. Someone once said: All models are wrong, some are useful. You build this kind of model, test it, fix it, make it better. Sometimes the insight you get doing the work is actually more important than the model produced. I believe the ARRL has been missing this kind of strategic analysis.

I am quite encouraged about what Howard is saying. I think he is poking in the right areas and applying the right set of tools. This will be difficult change management for the ARRL, so I don’t expect it will come easy or quickly. But it’s a start.

What do you think?

73 Bob K0NR

The post ARRL CEO Howard/WB2ITX Speaks appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

For the ARRL January VHF contest, I did a combination Summits On The Air (SOTA) and contest entry. I am recovering from a knee injury so Genesee Mountain (W0C/FR-194) turned out to be a nice easy hike for me. Of course, Joyce/K0JJW joined me and also did a SOTA activation. Caleb/W4XEN came along with us and activated the summit for SOTA using the HF bands. Finally, Brad/WA6MM showed up on the summit for a social visit.

To get to the Genesee Mountain, go west on I-70 from Denver, take Exit 254 to the south. Turn right onto Genesee Mountain Road and head into Genesee Mountain Park. There is an extensive trail system in the park and several different ways to reach the summit of Genesee Mountain. In fact, if the gate is open, you can drive right to the summit. The route we took starts at a parking area that is always open. With only a 0.7 mile hike (300 feet vertical), this is an easy and highly-recommended trail.

Leaving the parking area going uphill, we soon encountered the Genesee Mountain Trail which we followed to the left. Later we transitioned to the Genesee Summit Trail, which goes to the summit. Both of these are well marked but you need to make sure you catch the “summit” trail.

We took more than the usual set of equipment for this activation so that we could cover the 6m, 2m, 1.25m and 70cm bands. For FM, we set up a Yaesu FT-90 2m/70cm transceiver with a ladder-line J-pole hanging from a rope in a tree. This omnidirectional antenna does not have any gain but I figured that for FM it would be most efficient to not mess with having to point a yagi antenna. For 2m and 70cm ssb/cw, I used a Yaesu FT-817 driving an Arrow II dualband antenna. The FT-817 also handled the 6m band, driving an end-fed half-wave wire antenna supported by a fishing pole (HF SOTA style). For the 1.25m band, I just used an Alinco handheld radio.

Genesee Mountain is a popular SOTA summit because it is so easy to access but still provides a good outdoor experience. We encountered a dozen of so hikers and mountainbikers on the summit and it can be very busy during a summer weekend. The summit is wide and flat with plenty of room to set up a portable station. For VHF, it has an excellent radio horizon to the front range cities.

Joyce made 14 contacts on 2m and 70cm FM. I made 52 QSOs, as shown in the table below. SSB activity was relatively light considering it was a VHF contest weekend. I was pleased to work Jay/W9RM in DM58 on 2m SSB at a distance of 167 miles. W9RM is on the other end of the state with many mountains blocking the path. I also worked Jim/WD0BQM in Mitchell, NE (DN81) on 2m CW, at a distance of 175 miles. VHF is not limited to line of sight!

    Band   Mode  QSOs     Pts  Grd  
      50  USB      5       5    2   
     144  CW       1       1    1   
     144  FM      19      19    2   
     144  USB      7       7    2   
     222  FM       3       3    1   
     432  FM      15      30    2   
     432  USB      2       4    1   
   Total          52      69   11   
        Score : 759

We had a great day on the summit, operating for just under 4 hours (with lots of breaks along the way). Thanks to Caleb/W4XEN and Brad/WA6MM for joining the fun. If you are looking for your first or an easy SOTA activation, give Genesee a try.

73 Bob K0NR

The post Genesee Mountain: SOTA and VHF Contest appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Black Forest, Colorado; Sat March 16 and 23; 8 AM to 5 PM

Black Forest Fire Station, intersection Burgess Rd. & Teachout Rd.

The Technician license is your gateway to the world-wide excitement of Amateur Radio, and the very best emergency communications capability available!

• Earn your ham radio Technician class radio privileges
• Pass your FCC amateur radio license exam right in class on the second day
• Multiple-choice exam, No Morse Code Required
• Live equipment demonstrations
• Learn to operate on the ham bands, 10 Meters and higher
• Learn to use the many VHF/UHF FM repeaters in Colorado
• Find out how to participate in emergency communications

Registration fee: $30 adults, $20 under age 18

In addition, students must have the required study guide: HamRadioSchool.com Technician License Course Third Edition, effective 2018 – 2022, $22.95 print, $19.99 Kindle

Advance registration is required (No later than two weeks before the first session, earlier is better, first-come sign up basis until class is full.) To register for the class, contact: Bob Witte KØNR Email: [email protected] or Phone: 719/659-3727

Sponsored by the Tri-Lakes Monument Radio Association For more information on amateur (ham) radio visit www.arrl.org

The post 2019 Technician License Class appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Closing out 2018, here are the top five blog posts at k0nr.com during the year. Apparently these posts are “evergreen content” because they were all written years ago, well before 2018. With the exception of the Baofeng cable article, they were all on the top five list last year.

Happy New Year and 73 from Bob/K0NR

The post Top Five K0NR Blog Posts for 2018 appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

Every once in a while, I look at the number of licensed radio amateurs in the US and ponder how ham radio participation rates compare with other hobby activities. Take a look at this post from 2005: Some Amateur Radio Statistics and this one from 2015: Ten Year Trends in US Ham Licenses.

The latest number of FCC amateur radio licenses (March 2018, from ah0a.org) is 749,711 (Novice: 8847; Technician: 379,735; General: 174,478; Advanced: 41,153; Extra: 145,498)

The population of the United States (2018 estimate) is 325 million which means that FCC amateur radio licensees are 0.2% of the US population. (Yes, this number surely overstates the number of active radio hams.) From the 2017 Annual Report, ARRL membership is 159,070, which is a decline of 3% from the previous year, apparently associated with a recent dues increase. There is a slight time skew in the numbers but this means that ARRL membership is ~21% of the FCC licensees. This represents about a 2 point decline from the same calculation for 2005. Not a good trend.

It is interesting and maybe even useful to compare these numbers to other activities we are familiar with in the US.

Fishing

I stumbled across an in-depth analysis of sportfishing (basically all kinds of recreational fishing) by the American Sportfishing Association.  This report on US Angler Participation says that 49 million people in the US participate in fishing, or 15% of the US population. Frankly, that number seems a bit high but let’s just go with it. Perhaps what’s more interesting is their analysis of renewal rates for fishing licenses and potential reasons for why people start and stop fishing. Oh, guess what? Young people are not pursuing fishing at the same rate as adults so there is concern about the future of the sport. Browse through the website and you will find reasonably good data on the state of fishing in the US.

Outdoor Sports

The Outdoor Industry Association publishes data on a wide variety of sports ranging from bicycling to birdwatching. According to their numbers, every activity they track has a larger percent of the US population than the FCC amateur radio license number.  A very popular outdoor activity is bicycling, with a participation rate of 24%. Other significant sports listed include camping (21%), running (21%), hunting (6%) and downhill skiing (4%). Even birdwatching comes in at 3% and snowshoeing is listed as 1%.  This report also analyzes participation rates, motivations and trends by race, age and other factors. Good stuff.

Chess

I came across a web page that asks the question “how many people play chess?” This caught my eye because I think there are significant similarities between the game of chess and amateur radio. The answer: no one knows.

One study claims that 15% of the US population plays chess at least once per year.  This would be close to 50 million players and put it in the same participation class as camping or bicycling. That just seems too high…I can name quite a few of my friends and family that camp and bike. I can’t name hardly any that play chess regularly.

The US Chess Federation has 85,000 members, who are presumably actively involved in chess (for the most part). There are probably many times more people that play chess casually. A wild and generous guess of 10 times or 850,000 players would still only be 0.26% of the US population.

The chess community has many effective programs to help children get started in the game. This is probably a real strength for that community. However, I noticed several discussions in online forums lamenting the fact that children tend to drop the game in their teen years. Also, Sports Illustrated just published an article about how chess has always been dominated by men with women making limited gains in participation.

Model Railroading

Then someone on reddit asked why ham radio magazines have disappeared but model railroading magazines are quite available at the local bookstore. Now that is an interesting comparison. Model railroading is a well-established hobby that many people pursue for enjoyment. It is a bit “old school” with a strong hands-on “maker” aspect to it. It has also has seen the impact of newer technology, especially digital electronics. In terms of alternative activities, it is seeing competition from radio-controlled cars and aircraft.

This online forum puts the number of US model train hobbyists in the range of 150,000 to 300,000, but without much in the way of hard numbers (just anecdotal evidence).  One person argued that the number is more like 1 million hobbyists. This web site makes the claim (without references):

Today there are a half million model railroaders and toy train hobbyists in the US and Canada!

But many model railroaders see challenges ahead. This Wall Street Journal article discusses how the demographics of the railroader population are changing: End of the Line for Model Trains? Aging Hobbyists Trundle On

This web site also discusses the trends in model railroading. I found this quote to be relevant:

This hobby (as well as a lot of other markets) is currently dominated by the baby boom generation. They will be dwindling in numbers over the next ten years, and the generations behind them just don’t have the numbers to fill in unless there is a significant boom of interest in model trains.

One commenter suggests there are 1 million model railroaders in the US.

Analysis

First, I am struck by the number of different hobby and sports activities available to us. From a historical perspective, North Americans have significant leisure time and a multitude of activities to choose from. Some of those are “mainstream” in the sense that most people are aware of them and many people do them (examples: fishing, bicycling, running). Other activities fall into a niche (< 1% of the US population) but still have vibrant communities that pursue them with gusto (examples: chess, amateur radio, model railroading). The participation rate for Chess may actually be higher than 1% of the population…I’m really not sure…but it looks more like a niche activity than a mainstream hobby.

The mainstream activities tend to have access to good data on participation in the sport or hobby while the niche activities tend to be lacking reliable data. It seems that the more popular activities have a industry association or member organization with sufficient resources to pursue obtaining participation data and maintaining it over time. The information available concerning sportfishing and outdoor activities was pretty impressive. Chess, amateur radio and model railroading…not so much. If you are worried about the health of a hobby or sport, the first step is to have accurate data. (I recently heard that ARRL Headquarters is pursuing this. I certainly hope so.)

Participants in many of these activities express concern about the demographics of their communities. There are lots of comments on web sites about needing to attract younger participants for the future of the hobby, along with comments about how kids don’t seem to be interested. The big concern was getting kids involved but there are also issues of low participation by women. Certainly, we hear these same concerns in the amateur radio community.

One big takeaway is that amateur radio is not the only community that is concerned about growth. I’d really like to hear from radio amateurs that are active in chess and model railroading, to compare and contrast their experiences.

73 Bob K0NR

The post Ham Radio, Chess and Model Railroading appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

On Saturday, I had the privilege of talking to a group of radio amateurs on the topic of electronic measurements. I opened the session with a short discussion of “why do we even need electronic measurements?” This was captured in three “laws” listed below:

Bob’s First Law of Electronic Measurement

With electricity, most of the time we cannot observe what is going on without measuring instruments.

Bob’s Second Law of Electronic Measurement

When we can observe electricity directly, it is often a bad thing.

Bob’s Third Law of Electronic Measurement

Lord Kelvin was right

The post The Three Laws of Electronic Measurement appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.

The Rocky Mountain Ham Radio group offers an educational series they call RMHAM University. I am honored to be able to present on the topic of Practical Ham Radio Measurements on Saturday morning Dec 15th.

As many of you know, this topic is an intersection of my hobby of amateur radio and 40 years working in the electronic test and measurement industry. I’ve written two books on the electronic measurement and enjoy talking about it.

Here’s the agenda for the class.

Location and Registration

The post RM Ham University – Test and Measurement appeared first on The KØNR Radio Site.