AmateurRadio.com

No, not really. Here’s actual evidence…

In a previous article, I quoted current ARRL CEO David Minster NA2AA from one of his monthly Second Century columns in QST. I’ll reproduce it below:

“We know, and have known for years, that ARRL members represent the lion’s share of active hams. Moves to grow the hobby…have grown the total number of licensees, but not the number of radio-active hams.”
CEO David Minster NA2AA, QST (March 2023: 9)

Let’s take Mr. Minster at his word at first but also look his words carefully.

“Lion’s Share.” What does that mean? We hear hyperbole quite a bit in common parlance these days. Example: GOAT is the greatest of all time. (No one even mention Michael Jordan or Lebron James, ok?) In common usage, it is more glorified smack-talk than a concept that is defined, much less measured for systematic comparisons. (Apologies to the sports statistician students from my courses over the years.) The Chief Executive Officer’s monthly column in QST should be taken more seriously than water cooler talk, no? This is certainly the case since the ARRL has tax-exempt status from the IRS, whose guidelines say they should be truthful and transparent in statements to their donors (and members). As the Chief Executive Officer, his public words matter for they speak for the company.

Here’s what this phrase means:

If a person, group, or project gets the lion’s share of something, they get the largest part of it, leaving very little for other people. Collins English Dictionary

This means he is saying the vast majority of “active” hams are League members. The converse is that only a minor, irrelevant portion of “non-active” hams are members of the ARRL. It’s a rhetorical term without a numerical meaning. But for rhetoric to be successful in an argument, it must have the weight of convincibility which is largely evidence-based. So vast majority means much more than 51 percent which is a simple majority. Another argument is “The greatest part of something, to the point where alternatives are nearly irrelevant in size.” We will just proceed with Minster’s usage as reflecting some proportion which leaves the remainder as irrelevant in size.

Now, let’s wrestle with the oft-used phrase, “active ham,” to which Minster prefaces with radio, or “radio-active.” Unless we have some clear understanding of what this word means as well, then Minister’s claim can be whatever he wants it to be. Hams use it with their own, mostly unspoken, meaning. For example, a nearby club that I’ve been working with to regain their nearly dormant footing in Vicksburg has claimed the slogan of “VARC: Radio Active on the Mississippi River.” (They actually have the state’s only nuclear power plant just south of them in Port Gibson, MS but that’s not what the slogan refers to.) A dictionary definition references acting or capable of acting or currently in operation, in effect, in progress and so forth. It is one or more behaviors, for sure. But which ones and how much does it take to be considered “active” in the hobby? Every ham would have an opinion, of course, but we need systematic observation of amateurs’ behavior to better determine how to conceptualize activity in the hobby.

Active is “acting or capable of acting or currently in operation, in effect, in progress and so forth.” Collins English Dictionary

For the CEO of the ARRL, it means that a ham who engages in one or more of these unspecified amateur radio activities has a paid membership in the League (including Life Members like me). As I pointed out in a previous article, CEO Minster does not show any data, cite any studies (be careful of just citing a study as you might not actually have one), or go beyond the rhetoric of “we know in Newington” thus and so. Do we just take him at his word since HQ knows stuff without the transparency of how they know the stuff the CEO says they do?

Fortunately, we don’t have to. Our neighbor to the north, the Radio Amateurs of Canada, conducted a very detailed national survey prepared by Paul Coverdell VE3ICY with data collected in 2021. It covered all hams in Canada, including both RAC members and non-members. In fact, about 21 percent of all respondents were NOT members of RAC. When RAC President Phil McBryde VA3QR asked me if I would analyze the data for them, I did with the full report here. Paul VE3ICY included over 30 specific amateur radio activities as well as the time spent on them. Unless one thinks that ham radio operators in Canada are fundamentally and exceptionally different from those in the U.S., these are by far the best data on specific measures of ham operator behaviors. (Ok, Canadian hams do appear to be nicer, on average, but this is just my experience!)

Conceptualizing active ham operators

The scientific problem is that there is no recognized concept regarding being an active ham. Imagine trying to measure the impedance of any antenna without the concept? Couldn’t you see the morass of Youtube videos with a myriad of “meter measurements” that go all over the place except the places where the concept of impedance should take them? Sounds silly at first to those not well-read in the philosophy of science but how should we conceptualize ham activity?

Minster writes and speaks as if it is a light switch: either on (active) or off (inactive). Does it make sense to think of active or inactive hams only that way? If we asked two hams if they are “active,” each might say yes. Delving further, the first one might just be an ARRL member and really read QST every month. The other might be an ardent EmComm operator, participating in several weekly Nets and activating for emergencies with a local ARES team. And be an ARRL member. Are both “active”? Well, they say they are because each refers to a different standard of reference in doing so. It seems much more theoretically beneficial to conceptualize ham operator activity as a dimmer switch, or on a continuum rather than an on/off dichotomy, especially since the “off” of absolutely no activity has no internal variation while the “on” of some activity can range dramatically. I explore this distinction with these national survey data. The reader will see that there is quite a bit of variation within the “on” part of Minster’s dichotomy!

In my report to RAC on their 2021 national survey of Canadian hams, I analyzed the 32 specific operating behaviors. (Each is listed there for your reading so I won’t reproduce them here.) It’s clear that activity as directly measured by asking hams themselves if they do specific things varies quite a bit. I’ve excerpted Figure 2 from the report below. The average number of activities in a given month is about nine (9). These range from one (1) to twenty-nine (29). Quite a bit of variation. A dichotomy conceptualization of activity would not characterize these observations very well. Not a lightbulb turned off or on but a dimmer that varies greatly and shines rather bright if you’re doing a couple of dozen activities during a month!

It’s important to recognize the potential “sample selection bias” that truncates the distribution on the left (i.e., the truly inactive hams, those that would score zero here, may not be adequately represented in the survey). I’m not sure that this is different for non-members and members but we simply do not know. We will see if there are any differences in those in the survey who are not very active below. Given that these are the very first national sample data on specific operator behaviors, the results make this question pale by comparison to what we do learn from them.

In the right panel, box-and-whisker plots visualize how each age varies in total number of activities. The median number of activities (illustrated with the black line in the box itself) does not diminish that much with age. The small set of teens in the sample to make that group pop up in number but the overall distribution shows that middle age hams have small segments who really, really get involved in a diverse set of activities.

To emphasize the key here, the notion of being an “active” ham is best thought of as a continuum from an external, objective viewpoint. This allows for us to see how amateurs themselves say they behave instead of us individually recounting just what we see on a daily basis. This externally objective conceptualization is a canon of science. Water cooler hyperbole per se is not very useful to understand things from a scientific perspective.

Is Measured Ham Activity Related to National Association Membership?

If being a member of RAC, and by inference, ARRL, contains the lion’s share or “vast majority” of active hams, then this distribution of the total number of activities, and the time they spend on them, would show marked differences for members and non-members. It might show that measured years of self-defined “being active” would also be different, too. Wouldn’t “radio active” hams know they are active since we now have specific measurements on that activity? Let’s see. Here is the total number of over thirty specific activities reported by hams in Canada, separated by RAC membership. The box-and-whisker plots illustrate the distribution of each group. I’ve annotated the display for readers unfamiliar with this data visualization technique.

There is less than one average activity difference in favor of RAC members in comparison to non-members (means of 9.55 vs 8.81). This difference is likely to be non-zero (p = .006) in the population but substantively it is very small. The medians, shown in the boxes as black lines, are exactly one activity different (9.0 vs 8.0). The percentage of highly active and very lowly active hams are very similar for both RAC members and non-members. Finally, the general shape of the two distributions of amateur radio activity is almost identical. The capstone comment is that imagine all of the differences among Canadian hams in this survey in measured operator activities (see previous histogram). Of all these differences in activity, only 0.6 percent is due to membership in their national society! Less than one percent.

The total number of activities is one aspect of ham operator behavior. Another his how much time do they spend on these activities? Surely, an operator spending much more time on an activity is more “active” than one who spends less, right? Combine these for all activities since some hams are more pluralistic in their enjoyment of the hobby than others.

I’ll compare those data for members and non-members now in the boxplots below. Notice in the top panel that the raw numbers of total hours are bunched around the medians for each group. But the median hours spent in ham radio activities are actually higher for non-members (41.0) than members (35.5)! This equates to about 1.4 hours and 1.2 hours, respectively, in a 30-day month. Recall that the median (50th percentile) has one-half of the respondents below and above that point. The mean score will be influenced by very high or low scores. Each group has them (shown as the symbol * in the boxplot). Perhaps League members are more highly active hams as Mr. Minster alluded to in his QST editorial column. Not really, as the means for members (93.26) and non-members (120.19) still show that Canadian hams not in RAC report higher levels of activity than do members.

Because of the skewed distribution in the raw number of hours per month (small share of highly active hams in each group), the lower panel uses a log form of the number of hours reported. This gives the reader a clearer visualization of just how similar the two groups are in hours of activity spent each month. They are almost identical! To make the visual point in numerical terms, of all of the differences in hours of activity, only 0.2 percent is associated with RAC membership. Almost zero.

In the full Report, I combined some of these 32 specific activities into meaningfully similar indexes, such as EmComm, Competition (contesting), and so forth. Perhaps it is only among some activities that national association members gain this “lion’s share” of active hams. Let us see briefly.

In the set of six panels above, I’ve assembled comparative boxplots by RAC membership. Only one shows any differences for members and non-members: competition, such as in contests and DXing. None of the other activity indexes are any different by membership status.

Individual activity comparisons by RAC membership are detailed in the final report but do are not inconsistent with the stark lack of differences by membership status shown here (i.e., not favoring either one). Perhaps it is the contesting and DXing segment of ARRL membership that is most on CEO Minster’s mind when he asserts that the Lion’s share of “radio-active” hams are League members. That would be the only finding here that is in line with that viewpoint. I try to explain why this might have some influence on him in the final section.

Is the Scope of the Amateur Radio Career Where Membership Makes a Difference?

To give CEO Minster’s assertions every chance to be validated, perhaps his statement may be accurate over a longer duration of time. Like nearly all such surveys of behavior, the scope of time being referenced is a recent month. Would national association members be licensed longer or have a greater share of the length of their license tenure being “active” as they defined it? Would the temporal duration during the ham radio operator’s career better fit the “Lion’s share” description by CEO Minster? Fortunately, we can examine the RAC Survey 2021 national dataset directly.

As described in the Report, I have taken the measurements for years licensed (or tenure) and self-defined years “active” to make the following comparisons for national association membership. I’ve taken the difference (i.e., License tenure – years active) to compute a percent of the length holding an amateur radio license has been spent being active. I’ll call this the percent of active years since obtaining a license. It can range from zero to 100 with two-thirds reporting one hundred percent. This metric gets at the career aspect of being “radio active” rather than just a recent snapshot of ham activity. This variable cannot be more than 100 percent so it is truncated on the higher end. The two boxplots below demonstrate that there are virtually no differences in career active status for national association members and non-members.

Another nuance to length of license tenure and self-defined active status career is illustrated in the scatterplot below. This is simply the years active plotted by length that a license has been held. RAC membership status is denoted with different-colored circles as shown in the legend. Not surprising is the positive relationship: the longer the license tenure, the longer the ham reports being active. But note also that this is not nearly as high as many hams like to think it is. It’s the same regardless of RAC membership status (compare the two R-squared coefficients for similarity: .146 vs .144). The clustering of small circles at the zero point illustrate hams that have continuously been active. Note that the left axis means more years of inactivity (tenure – active). The more one is from the vertical axis reflects less activity since licensed. How different are RAC members from non-members in whether they’ve been continuously active? I’ll examine that next.

Using the data on “100 percent active” or not and membership status, the following crosstabulation answers this question. There is at best a three percent difference in “always active” status. For a survey sample, this is not a statistically significant difference (p = .303, ns) and thus the only observed differences are simply random fluctuations.

The time scope of the ham career also does not reflect any statistical differences, much less a Lion’s share.

What Can We Conclude About the Lion’s Share Thesis?

The recent statement by ARRL CEO David Minster NA2AA in his monthly QST column said that the Lion’s share of “radio-active” hams are indeed members of the League. This means that those hams who are not League members are a small, irrelevant segment of those hams who are “active” on the bands. He offered no data or other reference to this statement, simply that it is well-known, for some time, in Newington. As the CEO of a tax-exempt corporation, his public statements have greater weight than mere idle chatter, like that the reader may encounter at a hamfest. Indeed, IRS official guidance requires tax-exempt charities who solicit donations to be both truthful and transparent in their public and official statements to their constituents.

This led to my analysis of RAC 2021 Survey data on over 30 specific ham activity behavior to determine if there are any noteworthy differences between RAC members and non-members in this national survey. I demonstrated that the notion of being an “active” ham is best thought of as a continuum from an external, objective viewpoint. It is not useful to think of amateur radio opeartor activity as simply being a dichotomy like a light switch. Rather, the data show that there is a very variable continuum of activity.

I found almost no evidence supporting CEO Minster’s statement in his QST Second Century column. In this analysis, I tried to give every opportunity to find any area that fit Mr. Minster’s stated “Lion’s share” thesis. To cut to the chase: The single result that reaches statistical significance in favor of members was very small in practical value, less than one percent difference owing to RAC membership. It was one more activity per month that RAC members say they participated in versus non-members. The time spent in those activities was actually higher for non-members. The shapes of each respective distribution, even for the total number of activities per month, were nearly identical, further evidence of the similarity of members and non-members. All other metrics showed virtually no distinction between national association membership and non-members in Canada.

Specific areas of activity were also identical except one: Contesting and DXing where RAC members were demonstrably more active than non-members. Remember, RAC was born out of being a Section in the ARRL and modeled their governance organization in a parallel manner. If we assume that the US amateurs are generally similar to Canada, could this be what is shaping the CEO’s view from Newington?

It’s often heard that the “Contest Mafia” rules Newington by donations, serving on Committees, and becoming Directors. I’m not sure how empirically true this is but several prominent contesters have said this to me, sometimes in jest, but the idea is a real thing at minimum. Is Mr. Minster’s worldview of amateur radio in the U.S. heavily shaped by “radio-active” contesters and DXers who have higher influence in Newington? He has identified himself as avid contest participant (see QST Second Century column, November 2021: 9) and, rumor has it from some involved, enjoys organizing contesting trips outside the country with some Board members, Officers, and staff members. Thus, identifying closely with a smaller group might explain his statement and it presumes the same membership effect would hold in U.S. data. Clearly, from his column in September 2021’s QST, he has been influenced directly by a few power brokers:

Nearly a year ago now, I received strong feedback from a few important members; these were members who play an important role in our community or who were large donors. The messaging was consistent and clear: they were not happy with where the governance of ARRL had strayed. They weren’t asking me, they were telling me: I had to make it one of my top priorities. And I have.

A casual perusal of the call signs that place in the top echelons of various contests and highest on the DXCC Awards lists will also show many who are donors to the League, attaining specific mention in the Maxim Society: “ARRL is fortunate to recognize a group of individuals whose extraordinary generosity continues to support the organization at leadership level.”  It may be a stretch to make this connection but it is the only membership effect I found in all of these comparisons of activity by membership status.

Is another explanation of Mr. Minster’s “Lion’s share” thesis just a reflection of how he manages an organization? Remember, he says he comes from a lengthy career in the jewelry industry. Things are highly inflated (average mark-up for retail is 250-300%) and made to look bright-and-shiny in jewelry stores. Ever wonder why lights are bright and spotted toward the display cases? This is so as to make diamonds, gems, and other jewelry sparkle. Perhaps the CEO mis-spoke because of his career history in jewelry where bright-and-shiny promotions are the norm?

I have no idea if the Contest Mafia connection or the jewelry management background has anything to do with how far off the CEO’s statement is from recent (2021) national survey data from Canada. I’m stretching here to make sense of how wrong his column could be on this, unless they have convincing national U.S. data that they will not release to the public. And that may be at odds to the IRS guidance to tax-exempt non-profits since it intentionally lacks transparency to members.

Whether it is based on social influence from being a contester, politically influenced by powerful donors, or just a Machiavellian strategy to ignore the half-million licensed amateurs in the U.S. as not relevant to the existing League’s interests, it is just incorrect with respect to the only data on the subject that is in the public sphere.

A reader would have to argue that hams in Canada are demonstrably and fundamentally distinct from hams in the U.S. to wholly reject these results. Is there any evidence to that effect? Well, when the National Association for Amateur Radio, the ARRL, does not release data they say they have, and upon which they seem to make factual claims, we have no counter-factuals to this analysis based upon representative data from Canada. So, no there isn’t.

There is no other way to put this, based upon CEO Minster’s original statement and the results of this thorough analysis of national data on Canadian hams. If this is a “Lion’s share,” then it is a very small kitten indeed.

Corporate annual reports can be real snoozers to read. Unless you have a specific interest in the contents. A high school teacher once used a similar analogy as I tried to stay awake in her class which was just before basketball practice. History is boring. Unless it touches your life! If you’re a licensed ham operator, this story possibly does touch your life. For non-profits, annual reports, if issued, are most often a fiduciary document, not just something dashed out for informal consumption. In short, you should be able to trust what financial information is reported.

That’s actually a legal aspect of being a non-profit, especially if it receives tax relief on income and donations under the IRS Code 501(c)(3). (Not all non-profits have status under this part of the tax code.) This commitment to trust is part of the determination that the IRS makes when it issues a Ruling on a non-profit corporation petition for federal tax relief. Seriously. That ruling for the ARRL came back in 1931.

The formal non-profit requirements are not as clear when it comes to non-financial statements such as factual claims made in an annual report. But the IRS makes it clear that non-profits receiving tax relief under the tax code should be publicly transparent: “By making full and accurate information about its mission, activities, finance, and governance publicly available, a charity encourages transparency and accountability to its constituents.” I was President of a small non-profit for several years, fortunate enough to have a fellow ham attorney who handled these matters weekly as my Secretary-Treasurer. We recently closed the corporation since it had fulfilled its stated mission. We never issued an annual report. Thus, I have personally been through the process. Non-profits are not required to do so but they must file Form 990 with the IRS annually, in a timely matter. For the ARRL, many such filings are available here via a name search. The ARRL Foundation’s Form 990 filings can be found there, too.

Best practices in the non-profit world, however, do suggest the following if a non-profit issues an annual report document, transparency is vital. This complements the IRS quotation on best practices in the previous paragraph:

Transparency is important for a nonprofit. People want to know how trustworthy a nonprofit organization is and see the impact of the work they’re doing. A nonprofit annual report can highlight the good you’ve done, your profits, your losses, and your expenses. This can keep volunteers and investors satisfied with what they’ve helped to create. (Mosey, a compliance assistance company for non-profits).

Especially for a non-profit like the ARRL, which is a corporation with a separate Foundation that allows donors to receive some tax benefits through those solicitations, the transparency criterion is very important.

The trust that what is said in an annual report is akin to key non-required acts that the reader experiences every day. I come from three generations of bankers (my brother was the banker, I became a news journalist then college professor). There is no requirement for a bank teller to count back cash in front of the customer. None. Their bank rating by Sheshunoff & Company will not change one whit. Why do they do it, each and every time? To certify the trust that the transaction is accurate and complete. There are many other examples available but the reader gets the point: trust and veracity are paramount for a membership-based non-profit corporation that solicits donations.

This preface is useful for what I’m about to show. When I read the 2023 Annual Report, I was looking for membership numbers. But when I read the President’s Foreword, a paragraph jumped out at me.

Wow! Let’s ponder this number. Some 75 percent of Technicians just do not participate in amateur radio as soon as one year after receiving their FCC license. Before the reader fires up a spreadsheet to copy and past the simple license numbers from the ARRL FCC Licenses page, consider what this data means. Rick K5UR was referring to 75 percent of NEW licenses, not of ALL licenses. The full Technician license count is comprised of multiple elements: Total = (Existing Licenses + New Licenses) – Expired Licenses. There is no public data readily available that will identify this equation (i.e., give unique estimates consistent with the known total).*

*Moreover, the FCC mainframe ULS database is not efficiently updated to remove expired licenses when the expiration dates pass. It's an erratic thing based upon IT workload so on any given day, the ULS database for amateur radio licenses will undoubtedly contain what "should" be expired licenses but they just haven't been purged. Joe Speroni AH0A and I have downloaded the "end of year" full set of ARS licenses on or about January 1st each year to capture the EOY dataset. Joe used to maintain a snazzy website with a database backend allowing the user to generate custom tables and graphics with filters. He sunsetted that a few years ago but I got 2000-2012 from him before that occurred. I've continued to download the data each January 1st so I have a continuing series from 2000-present. They represent a consistent dataset for EOY numbers. 

But a thought experiment might be, say, 30,000 NEW Tech licenses per year. This would suggest that 22,500 would get licensed but become wholly “inactive” not later than 12 months afterwards. Imagine an active local club who works hard to get 50 new Techs into the hobby through their training and VE Testing Program in a year’s time. This would mean that only 12-13 would still be participating in the hobby a year later. Demoralizing, no?

This is a truly significant finding reported in the 2023 ARRL Annual Report so surely it was something carefully determined by people skilled in data analysis, right?. That’s what I would have assumed. It is critical to better understand this study so I needed to read it for the details.

Just knowing how being “active” in the hobby was defined and measured would be illuminating. We don’t have anything like a consensus on what this means, yet it’s used in any discussion of the state of the hobby. What were the source(s) of the data used? How large were they and how was the sample drawn? Did ARRL conduct a large random sample survey that has not been released to the public? (This is kind of a joke since they hardly ever release survey data to the membership, unlike RAC.) Will the sample generalize to some large population versus just being, say, hams in the Newington, CT area or something? So many questions that are important on this surprising result.

Yet, as the reader will see, CEO David Minster says there was not a study per se!

I sent Rick K5UR an email requesting a copy of the study cited here. So there’s no misunderstanding, I’ve reproduced the email chain below for reference. No he-said, she-said here.

Let’s see if I can summarize. The ARRL President needed some data on the state of amateur radio to frame the theme of the upcoming Annual Report which was on volunteers. The President was told something, either in person or in a presentation (he says he honestly does not recall), by the CEO David Minster concerning a surprising statistic from the Strategic Working Committee about Technician License retention. Rick K5UR publishes his Foreward in the Report as a clarion call for greater volunteerism toward new Technician licensees. Routine. Next on the to-do list, right?

A volunteer for the League (me) asks for a copy of the study since it’s really important for understanding recruitment and retention of new ham operators. And the IRS says this tax-exempt non-profit corporation should be publicly transparent in its activities as well as it being “best practices” to do so. President Roderick refers it to the CEO, who runs the show in Newington. Mr. Minster then corrects the language in the official 2023 Annual Report that there really is no study per se, only a bunch of data amassed to reach some conclusions. But, on the other hand, yes, they did put the results in many tables. OK? But the CEO doesn’t have the “non-study” set of tables or is unwilling to release them. He didn’t say. Mr. Minster points to the recently unelected Division Director Fred Kemmerer AB1OC to fork over answers to my basic questions noted in the email chain. (I get that Fred might not be in the mood for this.) As the source of this “massive set of data put into tables,” Fred AB1OC finally replies that he has nothing to add to what CEO Minster already sent me: which was nothing! So ARRL executives have acknowledged that there is not a study in any real sense but they also refuse to disclose whatever they did to reach this surprising conclusion about Technician loss to inactivity.

The result that I illustrated above should make rational donors question why they would willingly support an education or training project just to have three-fourths of the Technicians being produced take a hike from the hobby inside of a year. Put another way, how would the reader feel if their bank just said, we don’t have to count out your cash withdrawal to you…and we don’t have to explain why.

Is the reader shocked? I'm reminded of the George Bundy character in the old television show, Married With Children, who would say in this situation: Ah geez!

Many questions of suspicion come to the surface here. Did Mr. Kemmerer lose the materials? Did he or his group just not know how to conduct a quality analysis of “a bunch of data” so they’re afraid of releasing it for critique by those who have professional credentials? (Among professional researchers, this is called peer-review and is expected for every study of any significance.) Is it being angry over not being re-elected? Is it a belief that the public simply has no right to know anything cited in an Annual Report? I honestly do not know but one is forced to guess to fill in the blanks since he refused to communicate as CEO Minster told him to do.

I get that Rick K5UR got caught short with this, trusting his CEO to get him key data for the Foreward of the Annual Report which focuses on volunteers in the hobby. I’ve put together many technical documents like this and you have to rely on others for accurate information. The CEO is compensated $303,246 plus another $45,475 in additional monies (or $348,721) according to the latest IRS Filing. This should be the kind of thing that he does for the President in preparation for a fiduciary Annual Report just like getting an official auditor to verify the financial books. But you must get these things right in such a public document, according to those who proffer best-practices for non-profit filings of annual reports. Rick knows this better than I as he is a practicing labor attorney. You must present accurate statements to the court and must face questions by the judge or opposing counsel. This time, it’s the court of public opinion. Since the CEO pushed it off on a former Division Director, it’s confusing. Or perhaps not. The reader can make their own determination here.

The CEO is compensated $303,246 plus another $45,475 in additional monies (or $348,721) according to the latest IRS Filing. This should be the kind of thing that he does for the President in preparation for a fiduciary Annual Report just like getting an official auditor to verify the financial books. 

I’ve been involved with some key issues like this myself. My university research center years ago worked with the Congressional Management Foundation (CMF) on the alternative year survey of the U.S. Senate and the House staff. When the Blue Book report, as it was called, was released, it was said that everything on the Hill ceased for 15 minutes. Why? Congressional staffers wanted to see where they ranked in compensation among their peers. When Time Magazine was doing an investigative piece on the glass ceiling in Congressional staffing compensation for women, the CEO of CMF was on one telephone line with the Time reporter and me on another. When Time would ask thus and so, CMF would tell me the question and I’d quickly run the survey data on my Sun workstation, verbally giving the CMF CEO the results for his response to the reporter on the other line. The CMF CEO was speaking to the public, in the form of Time Magazine’s readership. He had to get what he said right so he called on a scientist involved with the data collection and analysis of congressional staff salary data. That’s a fairly pressured environment to get it as accurate as possible but that’s the deal, no? And, while Time is a for-profit magazine, the principle is the same for the ARRL especially since they solicit contributions from donors.

With the CEO washing his hands of it and the expert on the ARRL Strategic Working Committee just clamming up totally, we are left to conclude precisely what the CEO’s response to me said. There was no study per se. For whatever reason, when they publish something that is unfounded, trust tends to go out the window.

Now, should the reader trust the ARRL when they publish a statement about amateur radio in the U.S.? Should donors question the veracity of what good their money does for the hobby, especially if the solicitation is based on a publicly undocumented study? (Especially since IRS guidance suggests they must be transparent on their activities.) What other statements have not actually had studies behind them even though presented as such? I don’t know. If the ARRL does not have anyone who can conduct a formal study on a topic so it produces a self-standing document, then stop saying they’ve done one. But the transparency issue is still the underlying problem. It precedes the current CEO’s tenure in Newington.

Some years ago, I requested the survey data the ARRL pays for by Readex Research to better understand publication subscribers and readership. CEO Howard Michel denied that request (even though I am technically a volunteer staff “flunky” who is a professional survey researcher) stating that the “League would lose its competitive advantage.” Who is the ARRL competing with such that they desire an advantage?

General Manager at the time Harold Kramer told me that the Readex survey was “proprietary” to Readex. That’s contrary to my experience as a survey researcher who both had clients as well as hired large survey research companies like Gallup to collect data for my research program. I called Editor Rich Moseson at CQ Magazine, whose company also purchased a survey of their readers from Readex to see if the latter’s work for them was indeed the proprietary property of Readex Research. He told me no, it was not. I then called Readex as a prospective customer and asked them the same question. Their response was the survey data was the property of the client. So the League could have easily sent the data to me, as RAC recently did for a survey they collected, so I could provide expert additional analysis to assist “my” national organization.

But why tell a volunteer who is offering to donate about $10,000 of consulting time to help the League meet its mission statement of “to promote and protect the art, science, and enjoyment of amateur radio, and to develop the next generation of radio amateurs” something that is demonstrably untrue? The five pillars are Public Service, Advocacy, Education, Technology, and Membership. Clearly, such results from a national survey would significantly contribute to education, technology, and advocacy, if not the other two. It is the League’s mission. Is it to have complete control over any and all research findings? This way, the League can make whatever claims they wish without independent challenge.

The League’s record on corporate transparency is lacking in my mind from these events. It falls far short of the “best practices” for non-profit corporations as noted above: Transparency is important for a nonprofit. People want to know how trustworthy a nonprofit organization is and see the impact of the work they’re doing. It appears to be at variance with the IRS guidelines for transparency, too. The reader will have to evaluate accordingly. A statement that is often used in data science is: In God we trust. All others bring data.

Come gather 'round hams
Wherever you roam
And admit that the League
Has far from grown
And accept it that soon
It will be skin and bones

If the League to you is worth savin'
You'd better start engagin'
Or it will sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'

(adapted from Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-changin')

With the publication of the 2023 Annual Report by the ARRL, we now have two more years of membership and amateur license data since I published my Social Circuits column entitled, “Elvis has left the building.” Indeed, the recent kerfuffle over the membership dues increase and subscription benefits reduction by the League is really Calling Elvis. However, Bob Dylan’s famous ballad that the times are a-changin‘ is the tune being sung by amateurs in the U.S. As a Life Member, I wish it weren’t so but the statistician in me says that engagement, rather than abandonment, will be required to keep the ARRL’s membership from further sinking like a stone in these turbulent waters. Here’s why.

Foundational Ideas

To place the results from the data into a meaningful context, I need to note a few ideas that serve as a foundation for this article. We can think of any social movement organized as a volunteer hobby as incorporating at least two elements. One is the market of adherents who practice elements of the hobby. Another is one or more organizing groups who bring hobbyists together through various means by promoting “best practices,” new innovations, and recruiting newcomers. These are hobby associations, most often legally organized as non-profit corporations with or without associated foundations.

Such is the American Radio Relay League as per the IRS Ruling in 1931 and as incorporated in the State of Connecticut. (Note that there are two legal organizations, the ARRL Inc. [EIN: 06-6000004] and the ARRL Foundation [EIN: 23-7325472]). There are other associations, of course, but the ARRL has promoted itself as The National Association for Amteur Radio so it is the dominant organizer in amateur radio in the United States.

I make this simple distinction because it is imperative to not fall victim to the public relations slights-of-hand that are often practiced by some hobby associations. This is done to enhance the image of the association and to diminish their public failings to the dues-paying and donating membership as well as independent donors. The ARRL itself is NOT amateur radio. Licensed amateurs who practice the craft are the factual embodiment of the hobby as a whole. Don’t get that horse and cart reversed.

But that is generally not how the ARRL presents it’s version of what ham radio is, at least in the U.S. Indeed, in its 1965 50th Anniversary book, the League claimed that until then the history of the ARRL was the history of amateur radio! The appropriate quotation in the Forward by League Secretary Huntoon (1965) is “Since that time [1914] the story of amateur radio has been the history of the League, the chronicle of amateurs working together for the public welfare and for their common good.” Since 1965, the League has made similar claims about the hobby essentially being what officials in Newington say it is. In fact, over lunch, I had a now-retired League staff member haughtily say in my presence that, “In ham radio, if we don’t say it happened, it didn’t. If we say it happened, it did.”

“Since that time [1914] the story of amateur radio has been the history of the League, the chronicle of amateurs working together for the public welfare and for their common good.”

John Huntoon, ARRL Secretary, Forward, 50th Anniversary QST Edition

They have, for instance, changed their written history of the League over the years in several ways. It’s fully documented in QST and other historical documents that the League was co-founded by Clarence Tuska and Maxim. Today, the ARRL just states it was founded by Maxim. But, demonstrably with an apt reading of the independent history of U.S. ham radio as I have done, this is far more corporate PR than legitimate social history. From my reading, little has changed in the League’s public relations stance since the 1965 anniversary. Just read, for instance, the Centennial timeline and related documents for how far this version of ham radio history is at variance with historical documents. Note, for instance, that it was Tuska who taught the “novice” Maxim about the wireless of the time. But who now needs Tuska’s legacy since the Maxim family donated to the League after his untimely passing years ago? Finally, see any mention of Hugo Gernsback, who first organized a national group of hams? No, one doesn’t, for this rendition better serves the ARRL’s public relations interests.

These canards can especially be the case for monthly columns in QST in which statements are made without any empirical basis, whether real or simply held at the League offices as “proprietary.” A good example is: CEO Minster writes in his March 2023 Second Century column (p. 9), “We know, and have known for years, that ARRL members represent the lion’s share of active hams. Moves to grow the hobby…have grown the total number of licensees, but not the number of radio-active hams.” No studies are cited, no facts are on the League’s website, no independent research is offered to support this wanton assertion. It is terribly self-serving for the ARRL to say that the only “active” hams are those who hold membership in the League. As we shall see below, this is a common attempt by hobby associations to move the bar for more favorably evaluating their performance in serving the market for members. I’ll present empirical research in a future column that calls this “siloed knowledge” by the current League CEO into serious question.

“We know, and have known for years, that ARRL members represent the lion’s share of active hams. Moves to grow the hobby…have grown the total number of licensees, but not the number of radio-active hams.”

CEO David Minster NA2AA, QST (March 2023: 9)

This critical distinction leads us to see the clear but diverging paths that the market for U.S. amateur radio and membership in the dominant hobby association have taken. In short, the market is fine. The hobby association incorporated as the American Radio Relay League Inc. is not. Now, let’s turn to the data comparing the market and the organizing hobby association and try to make the best sense of them.

Hobby Market of Licensed Amateurs

How is the market of hobbyists who practice elements of the craft? Holding an FCC license to the Amateur Radio Service is the defining element to be a bona fide hobbyist, as opposed to only having in interest in ham radio. The figure shows that well over a half million licenses have been in force for the past quarter century (1997-2024). Indeed, three-quarters of a million have been held over the past decade (since 2015). If we note the recent drop in total licenses (circa 2021-), compare it to a similar decline back some 20 years ago. In circa 2004, license numbers declined by nearly 30,000 which is about the same as the most recent decline. What then happened? Amateur licensure took off on a bull market for a couple of decades.

But a key question is: what did the National Association for Amateur Radio do to foster that bull market? What is it doing now in similar circumstances? We will see some results shortly in the next section.

Is this market volatile? Do wild, frequent changes in the market prevent the organizing hobbyist association from putting an effective recruitment strategy in place? In this case, not at all! The figure below shows that there has only been a maximum percent and a half change over a six-month period since the late-1990s. Imagine a stock portfolio where the broker shows a client this low level of volatility! It would be a fairly secure position for the investor. Thus, the overall hobbyist market is fairly stable over the past 25 years or so.

But what are the “fundamentals” of the hobbyist market? We know that most hams today enter through the Technician Class license, whereas some years ago it was the Novice ticket. The “career” of the maturing hobbyist is to enter via the Tech license and move upward to the General and, ideally, the Extra classes where a fuller participation on various frequency bands can be experienced. Without individual license data records being linked over time, there is no valid statistical procedure through which we can estimate the progression of licensed hams through this career line. Most all writers about this—including the ARRL staff—make judgements about the fate of the Tech licensee but they are speculative in terms of statistical validity. (This is not a new problem, just ask political scientists who study voting using tabular marginals!)

Note: In future work, I plan to record-link the end-of-year FCC ULS ARS records from 2000-present so as to create observed "career lines" in ham radio licensure in the U.S. This record-linked database is being geocoded so that I can further characterize local geographies where hams reside and the place attributes as well. It is a lot of technical work but something that I've done over my career for many clients and studies, co-founding a peer-reviewed journal on these types of studies. But those data are not available today as this is being written. 

As shown in the graph below, the raw number of Tech licenses has declined since their peak in 2020. But let’s recall some factors that could well be at the root of it. Recognize that these are aggregate numbers. How many Techs moved upward into General or Extra class licenses? We can’t truly tell from these aggregate numbers. But we do know two things from these data. First, General and Extra ticket numbers continue to increase. Second, the obsolete classes of Novice and Advanced continue to decline as their holders do not renew when the license period ends. The fundamentals of the core license-holders of General and Extra appear to be in good shape. They have continued to steadily increase since the beginning of the FCC license restructuring.

This still begs the question of Tech license decline. What has caused it? It is isolated to just this class, ignoring the dormant Advanced and Novice classes. It may have little to do with the League’s actions. Here are my thoughts.

A fee for renewing an amateur radio license was implemented because of some Congressional politics involving “paying for Federal services used” by citizens. I also note that the substantial Homeland Security monies requiring amateur radio to be involved in state emergency management grants has all but gone away. Ten years afterwards, many Techs who acquired a license—such as many I taught in license classes for our state hospital association—no longer see a need for them since they were obtained as a job requirement rather than a hobby activity. Many hospital associations have moved to satellite phones for their emergency communication services to hospitals. In addition, the AT&T First Net funded by Homeland Security has reduced the perceived need by many first responder organizations to having their own in-house licensed amateur radio operators. These are possible drivers of the recent Tech license decline. We cannot fully answer that here but they are logical possibilities to explain this dip in only the Technician class licensees and are independent of League actions or policies.

Since the total number of licenses change over time, one frequent question involves the license class composition and its effect on the hobby market. The graph below is simply the percent that each license class is of the total for each six-month period. The oft-read concern that Techs are dominating the hobby (as if that’s a bad thing) is true, at least, in statistical terms. They have been almost one-half of the total licenses over this century. They are a source of license upgrades but we do not have good data on the probability that any particular Tech will do so (my planned work to record-link licenses will address this). Those with greater access to HF bands, Generals and Extras, have each been about one-fifth for a number of years. General class licensees, in particular, have kept pace with growth in Extra Class holders at very similar rates. We can’t conclude that this is because of the “career line” of upgrading per se but logic suggests that some of it seems to be just that. We just can’t estimate how much.

A conclusion is that the composition of the hobby market has been stable for over 25 years with a diversity of license class holders. I take this as a positive aspect of the hobby market.

We can take a peak at the potential change by license class in the volatility graph below. It’s the percent change in each license class every six months from 1997-2024. First, note the significant spikes or declines in the late 1990s are a result of the FCC license restructuring in 1999. Consequently, the obsolete Novice and Advanced tickets meandered along afterwards with some 5 percent or so biannual shrinkage. This should be expected and reveals little about the fundamentals of the hobbyist market. The key elements here are the relatively small change in the total licenses and the increase in Extra Class holders. While not as noticeable, General tickets tended to keep pace with the change in totals. Honestly, this chart reveals a solid set of fundamentals for the amateur radio hobby market itself.

I’ve now led the reader through a set of simple but reassuring data graphs testifying to the positive status of the marketplace of hobbyists. It would be challenging to use these results to make strong counter-factual statements. The state of the amateur radio hobby market is good.

One caveat is the demographic aging factor. I’ve written about this in several articles, including one involving hams in Canada and the UK who follow similar patterns from limited data (e.g., ARRL membership birth dates) in the U.S. The FCC dropped the birth date from license forms years ago so until the national leadership organization, the ARRL, collects professional survey data on licensed hams that can be statistically generalized to the nation, and makes the data public, we simply do not know how this “secret storm” will affect the market for the hobby. I’ve helped the Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) to do this already.

Organizing Association Fundamentals

I now turn from the hobby market to the Amateur Radio Relay League as the dominant organizing association. What are the similar indicators for the ARRL’s fundamentals? How is the National Association for Amateur Radio doing in terms of directly engaging with members?

I shared a quotation above illustrating the perspective of the current CEO David Minster. He feels that it is “known in Newington,” and for a long time, that the vast majority of “active” hams are those holding membership in the League. Mr. Minster does not say what being a “radio-active” ham constitutes. Thus, that leaves it open to serve any purpose chosen by leadership. But shouldn’t the League be concerned with whoever “non-active” hams are? The CEO’s writings do not seem to indicate so, from my reading of all of his monthly columns and many interviews he has given to favorable social media outlets.

To gain some perspective outside the hobby, it is not unusual for a non-profit group to lower the bar in self-serving ways when it comes to setting performance metrics. Over my career, I’ve led evaluations of major national and state programs, such as the 4-H Program as required by Congress, the Smokey Bear media campaign for the U.S. Forest Service, the demand for substance abuse services for a state as required by SAMSHA to allocate many millions of dollars into treatment programs, and how the education reform legislation of the early 1980s reached public schools and the public. These are merely a few high points. I can state that this strategy by program administrators to lower performance expectations happens a lot. But it shouldn’t and program evaluators generally try to set independent standards for reasonable metrics. And, here, there is no public evidence that it is the case that non-members of ARRL are any less “radio-active” than members. Do you know anyone who is “tearing up the pea-patch,” on the air but who is not a League member? I know many. Think of how many you know to make a determination.

The share of licensed amateurs who are members is the bona fide metric for ascertaining how effective the National Association for Amateur Radio is in serving their market (see also Dan KB6NU). With the context of vested interests expressed by ARRL leadership to reduce the market to current members as being “radio-active” having been acknowledged, let’s take a comparative look at how membership trends are doing.”We know, and have known for years, that ARRL members represent the lion’s share of active hams. Moves to grow the hobby…have grown the total number of licensees, but not the number of radio-active hams.”

“The share of licensed amateurs who are members is the bona fide metric for ascertaining how effective the National Association for Amateur Radio is in serving their market (see also Dan KB6NU).“

Frank M. Howell, PhD K4FMH

Using both data requested from ARRL membership staff as well as the most recent two years of Annual Reports, I’ve put together a couple of graphs below. I’ve annotated the years over the 2000-2023 period (latest) with who served as CEO for the League. This gives the reader some sense who on whose watch membership trends are accountable.

As I wrote in a previous Social Circuits column, the long-serving Dave Sumner K1ZZ is the Elvis of CEO leadership with respect to membership trends. He retired and left the building in 2015. This year was the peak of membership numbers during this period. Under Tom Gallagher NY2RF from 2016-2018, membership began a decline of over 15,000. He came from Wall Street in the decidedly for-profit world of finance. Tom was replaced by Howard Michel WB2ITA, from a technology corporate management background. His three-year term seemed to begin righting the ship as membership numbers increased by a couple of thousand. At least they weren’t rapidly declining as was the case under his predecessor or his successor. The current CEO says he came aboard in 2020 but really appeared on the scene for the 2021 membership year. Membership has dropped like a stone thus far under his tenure, plummeting almost 10,000.

It is disconcerting at how poorly the ARRL forecasts membership or other relevant matters. (See also Dan KB6NU’s column.) In the 2023 Annual Report, for example, this graph (page 15) appears, without comment, on the prior year’s monthly membership trends and the ARRL’s forecast for the 2022 year. The forecast itself is optimistic, projecting to increase League membership by several thousand. The observed data shows a decline by over six thousand! There is no inclusion of the previous year’s membership run-up upon which the forecast was likely based, a serious error in presentation.

How can this forecast be done so poorly by a medium-capitalized non-profit corporation with a $14M budget? I’ve seen similar corporate forecasts before, created to please a Board who wants growth outlook in the market. The complete silence in the Annual Report narrative on the graph suggests this may be what happened. But, almost anyone who passed a course with forecasting trends (covering Exponential Smoothing, Moving Average, Holt-Winters, etc.) could produce a better forecast, certainly with accompanying narrative, and would know better about professional presentation of such a forecast. Here’s some insight as to why this may be so.

A few years ago, I asked Bob Interbitzen NQ1R of ARRL’s HQ Staff at a hamfest in Huntsville AL about my providing some statistical analysis to some of their in-house data, offering my work for free as a volunteer staffer in the Delta Division. His blunt response was “we have our own statisticians!” That was news to me from perusing the staff directory biographies. When I asked my Division Director, David Norris K5UZ, who these people are, his said, “The only statisticians at ARRL are those at Survey Monkey! [the online survey data collection company used by ARRL]” This lack of honesty and transparency in some League operations, coupled with very poorly performed analytical products, only further the wedge between the ARRL and the hobby market. Is it so that HQ can maintain the “tone” of the results so that it does not reflect poorly on the League’s operations? The reader will have to make their own judgment on that.

“Bob Interbitzen NQ1R: we have our own statisticians!

David Norris K5UZ: The only statisticians at ARRL are those at Survey Monkey!“

Comments to Frank M. Howell, PhD K4FMH at a hamfest

My ICQ Podcast podcast colleague, Dan Romanchik KB6NU, has argued for some years now that a clear market share benchmark should be used by the ARRL Board to evaluate how the League is doing toward what it says it does: being the National Association for Amateur Radio. That means for all licensed hams, whether they turn on a radio or not. Whether they are members or not. Whether they say nice things about HQ or League officials or not. The current CEO entered the building with a Second Century column in QST that preached inclusion. He’s right: that’s the non-profit business thing that so many have to face if they are to be successful: serve the entire market. I think Dan’s argument that 25 percent of all licensed hams would be a good start on which to evaluate performance.

Let’s see below how the League is doing on that score. From my experience in program evaluation, it’s not too large to be infeasible to reach but enough to push program implementation and delivery. Mimicking Smokey Bear: only the ARRL is the National Association for Amateur Radio!

With the growth in amateur licenses—shown above for this century—the League has simply sunk like a stone in garnering market share. The highest market share was at the beginning of this period under Dave Sumner’s tenure as CEO, some 23.6% of the licensed hams at that time. Once he left the building, the market share has plummeted under each successive CEO that has a corporate management background. (I’ll comment on this notation in the conclusions below.) Due to the decline in licenses from 2022-23, the share actually ticked back up but this was based on about 2,000 fewer members.

But is the ARRL alone in this lack of membership? Dan KB6NU’s column comparing the ARRL to, for instance, Germany shows how far the situation has declined in the U.S. The DARC has about 50 percent of all licensed hams as members. Dan noted that the former membership director at ARRL left to take a similar position in an professional academic, membership-focused, non-profit. The Gerontological Society of America is a group of which I’m familiar as a former Professor of Sociology. Out of the 7,500 licensed geriatricians in the U.S., there are over 5,500 members in the GSA. This is at least 73 percent of their market. Their professional members must get licensed and maintain it, not too dissimilar to amateur radio where hams take exams and undergo periodic license renewal. The GSA serves the membership and lobbies to support policies that favor the conditions of their professionals and their clients. Both DARC in amateur radio and the GSA in the field of gerontology are clearly more valued by the market base to which they address.

Do the dramatic declines in market share by the League associated with each successor CEO to the long-term David Sumner K1ZZ suggest that these executives were to blame? Well, the buck does stop on that desk.

But I do not think that the root problem per se lies with the individual residing in that office. All three post-Sumner CEOs were hired from for-profit corporate management candidates. The ARRL is a non-profit, tax-exempt membership-driven corporation. Is this an optimal candidate pool for a Chief Executive Officer position at the ARRL? There is the related organizational structure issue of governance authority lines for the position as it is only answerable to the Board after a contract period is nearing an end (although these actions are not made publicly available). There is an insular barrier around the CEO with regard to the operational staff as Board members are instructed to not give directions to staff members. Moreover, lower level elected representatives like Section Managers have NO authority over HQ staff, as they all report TO the Field Services Manager and CEO. The President of the League is not elected by the membership but the Board of Directors for a specified term, with possible succession. No wonder so many former members took a hike from paying dues to an organization where they have no say in how the services they are supposed to receive from being a dues-paying member are managed!

But let’s leave the organizational chart to a future column for now. It’s already being drafted.

Some Thoughts on the National Association for Amateur Radio

There are few alternate conclusions to draw upon here. From a statistical viewpoint alone, the ARRL is NOT the National Association for Amateur Radio if the hobby market is the focus. As the 2023 Annual Report describes, the League does engage many hams into their activities: 7,000 volunteer staff (I am one); 26,000 Volunteer Examiners; about 200 Volunteer Monitors (I am also one who helped Riley Hollingsworth organized it); and various others totaling some 57,000 volunteers within its membership. Some, like me, are duplicates. But this engagement is very small compared to the hobbyist market to which the League claims to organize, lead and protect. There is no ignoring that fact.

Unfortunately, one of the key leaders, Division Director Fred Kemmerer AB1OC, was recently not re-elected to his Board position. I tried contacting him for some related information for this article, as directed by CEO Minster but he has not replied after two tries. I can’t actually blame Fred AB1OC per se but this is not a good footing for internal operations for the CEO to refuse to answer a question about a factual statement in the Annual Report, a fiduciary document. The extant conditions surrounding the ARRL do not lead me to think that there will be a bull-market turnaround in membership. There is a dire need to rethink how the HQ operates to serve members and the hobby market. The latter is strong, the not very well-known aging problem notwithstanding, but the organizing association is not doing well.

“There is a dire need to rethink how the HQ operates to serve members and the hobby market. … A wonderful drill bit make make the wrong hole if the hole in question requires a different geometry to be a good fit. Ask any homebrewer who builds things. A CEO from a for-profit career line just may not have the membership-focused, non-profit fit to be effective.“

Frank M. Howell, PhD K4FMH

The League’s standing among licensed hams, the current CEO’s attempt to paint only within the lines of an unknown “radio-active” segment to the contrary, is very poor. There is ample online media commentary to elaborate on this as well as an outsider group that provides critique to League actions, largely over governance issues. The Board of Directors has recently assigned a group to develop a strategic plan for the future. It is an insider-driven committee which is a an all-too-frequent and major mistake in program evaluation. Insiders already have vested-interest solutions whereas knowledgeable outsiders can more likely see the forests over the trees. Engaging non-member hams as well as member hams who do not hold office to give insights is key in this situation. But this tends to frighten the extant power structure so there are many fool-hardy reasons to not include this type of free and unfettered input.

My take as a volunteer “flunky” in a single Division under the two previous Directors is that it is not necessarily personal but positional in terms of leadership failure at HQ. A wonderful drill bit make make the wrong hole if the hole in question requires a different geometry to be a good fit. Ask any homebrewer who builds things. A CEO from a for-profit career line just may not have the membership-focused, non-profit fit to be effective. From the management literature (obtained from a simple Google search for “management in corporate versus non-profit organizations”), a brief reminder of the different emphases might be useful. As a side note, I learned much of this information back in the 1990s while in the US Department of Agriculture’s Administration School, the large one in the world. This stuff is far from new.

• Primary Goal: Corporate management aims to maximize profits for shareholders, while non-profit management aims to fulfill the organization’s social mission and serve the community.
• Decision-Making Focus: Corporate decisions are often driven by financial returns and market competition, while non-profit decisions prioritize the impact on beneficiaries and alignment with the mission.
• Funding Sources: Corporations generate revenue through sales and services, while non-profits rely on donations, grants, and fundraising activities.
• Board Composition: Corporate boards typically consist of shareholders and business leaders with a focus on financial performance, whereas non-profit boards often include community members, volunteers, and individuals passionate about the cause.
• Performance Metrics: Corporate performance is measured by profit margins, return on investment, and stock price, while non-profit performance is often assessed based on program impact, beneficiary satisfaction, and fundraising success.
• Resource Allocation: Corporate management may allocate resources more readily to high-profit initiatives, while non-profits may prioritize programs with significant social impact even if they are less financially lucrative.
• Compensation Structure: Corporate executives often receive large salaries and bonuses tied to financial performance, while non-profit leadership may have lower salaries with a greater emphasis on benefits to the community.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Corporations primarily engage with shareholders and customers, while non-profits need to actively engage with donors, volunteers, beneficiaries, and the broader community.

Does the reader see the difference in how a CEO candidate, as currently situated in the non-profit corporation of the ARRL, might operate very differently if s/he comes from a corporate vs a non-profit career background? Does that help us in understanding the membership data? I think so.

These data results show demonstrably that, with a possible token exception of Howard Michel, this for-profit corporate management CEO pool for hiring ARRL top management has not lead to a greater share of the hobbyist market. Indeed, this share has been dropping like a stone under this hiring pool model for CEO leadership.

Would hiring top management from the non-profit sector yield a more effective outcome? Would not having a Chief Executive Officer at all but replacing it with a Chief Operating Officer from a membership-service non-profit background be a better fit for the ARRL? This would remove the unelected “executive” authority element from the position that has been a core element in the clash with Board members, HQ staff, and the membership. How about doing what other membership-service non-profits do and elect the President directly from membership votes?

My conclusion? It’s not a personal failure of each CEO. It’s an organizational failure of hiring from a poorly fitting pool of candidates into an organization formed over a century ago to relay wireless messages across the country. Should part of the pending strategic plan being developed by the National Association for Amateur Radio consider a substantial restructuring of the organizational chart, authority lines, and governance driven through elections of the President, Board, and Section Managers by the membership? For the amateur radio hobbyist, this might seem dire. But from an objective organizational viewpoint, it is also an opportunity emerging from a crisis. That crisis is a pending organization that is heading toward skin-and-bones to quote Bob Dylan.

What would an entrepreneur see and opportunity in a marketplace where the long-time leader is not reaching 80 percent of the known market? Especially with follow-on fringes of potential market growth (i.e., non-licensed but interested persons) that might be reached by new approaches? There is ample room in this market for another hobby organizing group, perhaps one that is driven by online technology that reduces costs, is decentralized to reach the evolving post-Boomer generations, and more grass-roots oriented in terms of authority structure. Would such a group make a credible foray into being a competitive organizing hobby association? What about a competitor to QST that is only in PDF format costing, say, $10 a year to subscribe? One that is not the “Better Homes & Gardenias” style of magazine editorially but one that has technical material many former ARRL members say they miss from the previous editorial style of QST some 13 years ago now? If lobbying were left to the League, a new organizing group could supplant LoTW, QST et al., contest management (think of what POTA has done in five years), emergency communication without tears, and so forth. Is this a possibility? Should it be?

That’s up to the ARRL’s actions to reclaim the market. I am doubtful. But there is a large segment of the hobbyist market that is there not being served by membership services in the American Radio Relay League of today. Hmm. Australia has for years had two organizing associations…

This is the final installment on my analysis of the RAC Survey 2021 on Canadian amateur operators. The previous article examined RF power reported by this national sample of ham operators. The other shoe on power use is the prospect of gain residing in the antenna used for transmitting. I begin with the HF through six-meter results for the basic antenna type used by Canadian hams. Figure 1 contains these results.

Just shy of two-thirds (62%) report a single-element antenna. The common dipole is an example of such an antenna. This is not a surprising result per se. The dipole antenna is often the first antenna described in license examination material. It is also the most frequent first-time build antenna for most new ham licensees. These results illustrate how the single element antenna serves the HF and six-meter frequencies well even today.

Multi-element arrays, most always having both gain and direction, are used by almost one-third (31%). For this frequency region, most are of the Yagi-Uda type, although there are wire beams as well as phased verticals, too. In results not shown, I examined whether multi-element array antennas on these bands are related to DXing or Contesting activities. They are in both. DXers and contest operators about about twice as likely to report typical use of multiple-element arrays than those who do not participate in these activities.

The magnetic loop is reported in use on HF by about 8 percent in this survey. This antenna design for the HF and six-meter bands is available for homebrew construction with many plans available. But it is also readily available from several commercial manufacturers. Putting a number on the share of hams reporting they use it for transmitting and receiving on HF tells us something about this type of design, which is known to have a high Q coefficient as well as lower noise than the single wire antenna. I examined the results by province, age group, and whether DXers or contest ops were more or less likely to use magnetic loops but do not present the results here. There were no appreciable differences regarding magnetic loop use in those groups of respondents.

Turning now to antennas used in the VHF and UHF bands, Figure 2 shows that the vertical antenna is almost ubiquitous. Three-fourths (77%) use a vertical antenna on these bands. About one-fifth (19%) use a multi-element array, with either a horizontal or vertical polarization. This is likely a Yagi beam design but others are possible. Only a handful say they use a single-element horizontal antenna on these bands.

It is reasonable to assume that most of the multi-element array designs are used for DXing or Contesting or both. As was the case with the HF bands, the use of multi-element arrays for the VHF and UHF bands were about twice as high (40% or so vs 20% or so) as for hams who say they do not do those activities.
Only a small fraction of hams operating in the VHF or UHF frequencies say they use a horizontal single-element antenna. It is likely that the mobile use of these bands may deter an alternative polarization if the operator is at a fixed location.

Heading now to the microwave bands, we noted in a previous article on this blog a small group using higher power levels for transmission. But power in watts is not readily necessary on these bands due to the higher gain often realized in the antennas used. Figure 3 illustrates the distribution of antenna gain (dBi) reported by amateur operators. While a small portion use antennas with less than 5 dBi gain, the median figure is about 22 dBi. Some say they have very high gain of over 40 dBi which makes even small power in watts effectively “high power” on the bands.

These antennas are typically designed to be much physically smaller than those used on lower frequencies. This provides a potential for more accessible use. However, the dangers of a very high effective power rating (power in watts plus antenna gain) can actually work against this flexibility. As manufacturers release more commercial equipment for these varying microwave frequency bands, it is likely that the numbers of amateur operators will dip their toes into the microwave bands. This survey only captures a small number of them because their relative share of the population is small.

This concludes this article series. The full report is available in PDF format at my FoxMikeHotel.com website here.

Results from the RAC 2021 Survey

In this brief article, I focus on how much transmit power is typically used on the HF and microwave bands. Survey respondents were asked about what they consider “typical” usage although these settings can certainly be different at any given operation. The results do give the reader a picture of how amplifiers are used on these two broad segments of band allocations by Canadian ham operators.

In Figure 1 (click for larger image), the maximum power used to transmit on 160-6 meters is displayed in a pie chart. Although many may not agree that 10 watts is QRP power, we are using that convention here. About three-fourths of the survey respondents say they use between 10 and 150 watts in a typical transmission. This is a wide gap in RF power. However, it is a range that places operators between QRP and what many of today’s HF transceivers will output. Some 17 percent use over 150 watts, perhaps up to their license limit. Only 7 percent report that they use QRP levels at less than 10 watts. These responses are not contingent on the mode of transmission.

Turning to the VHF and UHF bands, Figure 2 summarizes the typical power used in Canada. A similar pattern occurs as in HF and six-meter operation. Just under three-fourths (71%) use between 10-150 watts on a regular basis. A small slice, some 2 percent, report over 150 watts. About one-fourth (27%) say that less than 10 watts is what they typically use in these bands.

In both HF and the VHF/UHF frequency bands, only a small proportion say they use amplifiers to reach over the 150-watt RF power mark. There is a small but notable share using what we’ve termed QRP levels in HF (7%). A decidedly larger share use above QRP levels in VHF or UHF bands (27%). For many hams, this is very understandable, given the most popular band of 2 Meters (92%). But operations on HF using a 10-watt definition of QRP are much smaller.

The power utilized in the microwave bands reflects a very different picture. Figure 3 displays two box plots to illustrate. As shown in previous articles on this blog, microwave band usage is a niche activity within Canadian ham radio. Fewer than 10 percent report any activity but these spent quite a bit of time on these frequencies. Likewise, the boxplot in the left panel of Figure 3 illustrates the small number of microwave aficionados who use high power. (This is power in watts without consideration of antenna gain.)

In the right panel, I’ve reproduced the left-hand panel’s data in watts into a logged form to allow readers to more closely see the lower power portion of the distribution. The log of the power in watts places less emphasis in the smaller frequencies at the extreme power levels. The average power usage is 40 watts with a majority under 100 watts of power. This is not the power level emitted from the antenna with is buoyed by the relative gain of the antenna.

I examined these transmitter power reports by province, age group and license class. There was not much meaningful variation in those data apart from the differences in reported activities on microwave bands. In part, this is the limitation I mentioned of the small number of extreme values in the upper power range. The specialization of using high power in the microwave frequencies is a small number of Canadian hams, at least in this survey. It would take a new sampling design to “over sample” hams who are microwave users to get a more reliable estimate of the higher power ranges in use.

In summary, power output in Canadian amateur radio operations tends to reflect the output of the transceiver on HF bands. There is a wide variation in the category but this is a reasonable conclusion. QRP use is a bit smaller than I expected, given the popularity of portable operations (37%). But this reminds us that not all portable operations use low power. There is innovation in a small group of microwave operators. They use a significant amount of power. A later article will examine reported gain in antennas used in this band. As the microwave bands become more routinized in the hobby, these pioneering leaders will have laid a path for others to follow.

Results from the RAC 2021 Survey

What modes of transmission are used in various amateur radio bands? We are aware of the stalwarts of SSB or CW on HF, FM on two meters, and so forth. But some still use AM and there’s the various digital modes, like the venerable RTTY. The weak signal modes implemented under the WSJT-X software (FT8 etc.) have seemed to exploded on the bands. But where? And in what share of reported use by amateur operators?

In this article, I present some of the reported modulation modes used in specific groups of bands for Canadian amateur operators. The mode distribution by band is shown in a pie chart with the percent usage for each band. (Click on the graphic for a larger image.) This allows the reader to quickly identify where a specific mode is used and how diverse modes are for a given band allocation. This depiction does not show how much a mode is used in terms of time, only how the mode’s reported use is distributed across bands.

As a convenience to readers, I have reproduced the bar graph illustrating the percent of Canadian hams reporting the use of each band in an appendix below for quick reference.

In Figure 1, AM and SSB modulation find their traditional bands. One half of the AM use resides in the 80- to 10-meter bands. It is used to a lesser extent in 160-meters, 2-meters and 6-meters with sparse usage in the remaining band allocations. There are contests organized around two meters which may well create some of that use as well as SOTA and related operations. The Magic Band of six meters is open for distance seasonally and sporadically within and outside that season. The use there is likely predicated on the propagation eccentricities of six meters. The microwave bands have small use of AM. Recalling the smaller segment of hams operating in these bands (see appendix), this use may be ardently deployed by a smaller number of active amateurs there.

The use of single sideband usage is unsurprisingly dominated by the 80-10 meter HF bands with six meters coming in a distant second. The six meter and 160 meter bands come in next at 19 and 14 percent, respectively. This is followed closely by two meters (13%). These figures tend to decline sequentially as the frequency band increases. SSB is a frequently used mode, largely in frequency bands that are fairly known to active ham operators.

Turning to the use of CW, it is an original mode for the radio amateur. There are many, many debates as to the status of how much Morse Code is used on the ham bands today. For the first time, this national survey documents both how many hams say they use CW (32%) and where they use it as shown here in this article. As displayed in Figure 2, CW is used in several bands, dominated by HF (80-10 meters) at just over one-third (35%). Two bands bookending HF finds CW a common mode: 160- and 6-meters. This mode’s usage drops off precipitously in the 70cm band, 900 MHz, and 10 GHz bands. These are followed by the 1.2 GHz band with the rest having nominal CW activity reported in this survey.

These national survey results should serve as a benchmark—along with the share of hams reporting the use of CW in the appendix—for future discussions of the status of CW operations, at least in Canada.

The rise of digital data modes (especially the wildly popular FT8) is confirmed in this national survey of hams. Some inferences can be made using signal spots (like PSKreporter) of specific transmissions and reception circuits but they do not represent the broad population of all ham operators, only signals over a transient period. The HF bands, from 80 to 10-meters, are used with digital data modes by over one-third (35%). This is followed by 6 meters (15%) and 160-meters (12%) as well as 2-meters (12%). There is nominal to significant digital data mode use on the rest of these band allocations as well. The 70cm band has, for instance, 6 percent of these amateurs using digital data modes there. Thus, digital data modes are a significant means of communicating in most all of the amateur band allocations for Canada. While HF and nearby frequencies are the prominent areas, it is only 24 GHz that show no reported digital data mode activity as of 2021.

The uses of a modern digital voice mode as well as a traditional data mode, RTTY, are summarized in Figure 3. It is no surprise to the reader who is active on 2 meter and 70cm repeaters that some 85 percent of the relative digital voice usage across bands is concentrated here. The 2-meter band has 44% while the 70cm band has 41% of digital voice use in Canada. The rest reflect nominal patterns, such as the 4 percent with digital voice operations in the 6-meter segment. These specific digital modes (DStar, etc.) are not broken out separately in this survey. The picture of where digital voice modes are used is rather clear in these results.

The traditional data mode of RTTY remains largely an HF-centered transmission style. The 80- to 10-meter bands garner almost three-fourths (71%) with the 160-meter band trailing far behind in second place at 15 percent. The remainder trail off as the frequency goes up the spectrum. RTTY is still used, perhaps during RTTY-allowed contests, but it is used almost wholly on HF and 160 meters.

The final transmission mode presented in this article is slow-scan television (SSTV). Figure 4 contains these results. Like RTTY, it’s largely an HF use pattern (52%). However, for SSTV, two meters has almost a third (31%) of the traffic in this mode. The 70cm band follows (8%) with six-meters right behind (6%). The 1.2 GHz band, gaining in popularity due to more commercial equipment being available, is used by 1 percent. The other slivers in this pie chart round down to zero percent but it does reflect small numbers of microwave-oriented ham operators making use of the spectrum. Will that grow? It will take another replication of this survey a few years in the future to determine if that prospective growth is measurable in such a broad survey like this.

Conclusions

Transmission modes in Canada largely conform to what many readers would expect for the traditional modes of SSB and AM. CW use may be somewhat surprising but should be compared to the prevalence of CW usage by Canadian operators (see appendix). The use of digital voice and data modes is much more diverse in some ways. Digital voice has taken flight on both repeaters but particularly the small, inexpensive “hotspots” that operate via the Internet to connect local operators to other repeater systems worldwide. Digital data modes have exploded through the proliferation of the WSJT-X software and it’s variants. Many hams in the public sphere decry the use of, for instance, FT8, over using voice or CW modes. However, it has made many bands more active as can be seen by others analyzing the online databases of observations such as WSPR, PSKReporter, and the RBN sites. Such is how behavioral change occurs in large, moderately organized groups like amateur radio. It is the collective behavior that shapes the usage of a technological innovation like weak-signal modes and such.

My overall assessment of these results is that the Canadian ham bands are both stable, in the main, and innovating in some frequency bands. I say this partly because the microwave regions have a pluralistic set of modes in use today. This is undoubtedly the result of experimentation as well as competitive contesting or DXing activities. The combination of modes plays well into the future growth of both the operational efficiency as well as the market development for commercial products. The recent release by Icom of their IC-905 transceiver is a case in point.

I hasten to note this. Some readers will invariably say, “But I don’t see that [result]…” Sure, an individual ham operator’s observations either on the bands or elsewhere are a relatively unique way of gathering observations. They are not consistent across observations as people look at the world in differing ways. And, they do not garner insight into a collective national view of what is consistently obtained in a large-scale survey such as that for the RAC Survey 2021. Please bear that in mind with regard to these results as you read them.

Appendix: Band Usage Bar Chart from Full Report

Results from the national RAC Survey 2021

The 2021 RAC Survey asked about the use of frequency band segments and hours per month devoted to each one. This identifies where Canadian amateur operators transmit to complement what type of communications they reported (see Full Report). The bands used and the amount of time per month reported by survey participants provide the contours of these behaviors in Canada. They also provide RAC with demonstrable data for the Canadian regulator as to how these frequency allocations are being utilized by the amateur radio service in that country.

I begin with the share of hams reporting the bands and band ranges they use in a typical month (see Figure 1). The results are fairly clear, reflecting no surprise at the dominant bands, but give empirical contours to those used by smaller segments of Canadian hams.

This chart shows that two-meters is the common band for over 90 percent of Canadian amateurs. The HF bands, from 80-10 meters, are second at over 80 percent. The UHF band of 430 MHz is used by two-thirds (67%). These three bands are used in a typical month by a majority of hams in Canada. They are followed by the Magic Band of six-meters (46%) at less than one-half. The Top Band, 160 meters, is used by almost a third (30%) of these hams. The 220 MHz band captures about one-fifth of Canada’s operators. Above this frequency, are the microwave allocations, including Super HF at above 3 Ghz. None reach a tenth in reported usage and systematically decline as the frequency goes higher. It is likely that the need to homebrew much of the equipment to operate in these frequencies is an inhibitor for their use. This may change in the future as commercial manufacturers get into this market segment.

A total of 194,174 hours per month were reported by Canadian amateurs to have been used over 15 bands during 2021. The average is 93 with an estimated standard error of 5.4 hours. The variation in these reported hours is large, with a standard deviation of 249! (This is not unusual in a highly skewed distribution.) The median is 34 hours per month, or just over an hour a day. This means that one-half spend more with the other half in the survey reporting less. These statistics are only for hams reporting any hours of usage per month (a total of 121 respondents reported zero hours). This demonstrates that many operators are active, perhaps one hour per day or so while a smaller segment report spending vast amounts of time on one or more of these bands.

These summaries should be qualified with a small anomaly. One element of modern amateur operations is “always-on” monitoring receivers or beacons. These could be APRS on 2-meters, transmit beacons on other bands, scanning VHF bands or above, and a host of others. The survey asked an open-ended question about hours of use on a given frequency band. Some respondents added text statements when they replied with 720 hours per month (24 hours x 30 days) to the effect that beacons or other “always-on” transmitters or (scanning) receivers were used in their shack on that band segment. Some of the extreme hours reported per month likely reflect these “always-on” monitoring activities.

These patterns can be seen in Figure 2, containing two box plots of total hours reported. On the left, the number of hours is concentrated around the median (represented by the dark line in the middle of the “box”) of about 34 but a share of respondents responded to the question with increasingly larger totals. The 3,000-hour total clearly reflects multiple radios in operation at the same time by a given operator in the survey. Many of those reporting less than this highest value also fit into this operating style. The complementary box plot (right) illustrates how the bulk of hams vary in hours of operation on all bands. This is expressed in a log transformation of total hours. This graph of the log (LN) of hours reported shows the distribution in a way that is not dominated by the extreme high values reported in the survey. This set of graphs show that there is a small portion of Canadian amateurs who report large numbers of hours on multiple band segments whereas the high majority say they operate around the median of 34 hours or so.

However, the more representative pattern of behavior is a spread of hours that varies by band. To best understand these patterns, we consider the “time portfolio” that a ham might allocate to the hobby. The median would suggest about an hour a day (which may be bundled to several on a weekend but none on a few week days). What share of time in the total number of hours that amateurs report spending each month is allocated to each of these band segments? In other words, whatever the total time spent on the hobby, where is it spent in the frequency spectrum?

I computed the total time as described above. The reported hours on each band were converted into a percent of the total time spent per month by band. These percentages, which total to 100 percent for an individual respondent, are shown in Figure 3 as a box plot of the distribution by band. This represents a time portfolio characterizing each amateur in the survey.

Two patterns jump out to me in Figure 3. Some hams spend most of their time on 2 meters and 430 mHz while others are mostly HF operators. This is not a surprising result for most readers. There are small numbers of hams who are effectively “band specialists.” Note those near the 100 percent mark on various microwave bands or 160 meters or the lowest bands, 630 and 2200 meters. Some operate mostly on six meters. The bands with low medians but a skewed distribution toward the highest end illustrate these specializations.

It is important to note the dominant patterns of frequency usage while also recognizing that not all hams follow suit. Some choose to be band specialists in the time they spend participating on these frequency allocations. These are the first such data ever reported on a national sample of licensed amateurs so it is a benchmark against the various impressions that most hams have of how bands are utilized on a routine basis.

Age Patterns by Frequency Range

I have organized comparisons by age group for each prominent frequency band: Low Frequency, HF, Very and Ultra High Frequency, and Super High Frequency (see Full Report for details). These results will tell us about age differences in how bands are used. Do younger hams use particular bands than more senior ones? Are there sharp differences by age in the adoption of higher bands? Age patterns can inform us about future band allocation policies so they can be critical bits of data for national advocacy groups and spectrum regulators.

Low Frequency (LF) Bands

I begin with low frequency (LF) bands, including 2200, 630 and 160 meters as represented in a stacked barchart (Figure 4). Each bar represents the banduse composition for a given age group with specific labels to make reading them a bit easier.

As a long-standing band allocation, the Top Band of 160-meters is used by every age group. This is particularly so for those over age 30. But the newer allocations of 630- and 2200-meters are sparingly used among all ages. Likely because of the required antenna lengths and land-use restrictions, the lowest frequency band (2200-meters) has, at most, a mere 3 percent participation in any age groups. The 630-meter band has at most a 5 percent usage rate, this among twenty-year-olds. Surprising results perhaps but it is informative to more fully grasp how the newer LF bands are reportedly being used.

High Frequency (HF) Bands

The results for HF include the Magic Band of six-meters are shown in Figure 5. There are few surprises in this graph. The 80 through 10-meter bands are enjoyed by over half of the hams in Canada for those over age 20. (This is likely due to licensing patterns.) These are the most long-standing allocations where the widest variety of commercially available equipment is available to the amateur radio market. Use of 80-10 meters slightly increases with age (e.g., 20-year-olds at 53% vs 80-year-olds at 94%). The HF bands are in good stead regarding dominant use by hams in Canada.

For six meters, use is fairly constant at just less than one-half of Canadian ham operators play in the periodically open Magic Band. This really does not change much by age. The attraction to this low-opening, high-reward band is the ability to work DX during band openings. A minor attraction is local and regional communications, often using repeaters operational on the band. To link this band back to Figure 3’s time portfolio, note the share of hams who spend most of their time on six meters.

The result of the highest reported usage (33%) among the small number of teens in the survey should be taken cautiously since the actual use in the population could be different than the other age groups with higher numbers of respondents (i.e., there is a low number of teens in the survey).

In short, the results for usage in the high frequency to six-meter bands is largely what would be expected by most amateur operators. But knowing the age patterns does empirically illustrate how young hams get into HF at those ages, too. This grounds the survey into the type of results that can be more reliably trusted for findings that are unexpected, too. The intriguing result of the “band specialists” for six meters await openings to operate tell us about another segment of the amateur radio hobby in Canada.

Very and Ultra High Frequency (VHF/UHF) Bands

Turning to VHF and UHF bands, Figure 6 also shows no surprises: two meters is king! About 90 percent or more of every age group says they work two meters in a typical month, hands-down the universal frequency band for Canadian amateurs (see Figure 1). This is followed by the 430 MHz band which is a bit more popular among younger hams than older ones who tend to favor 2 meters. The 220 MHz band universally holds a slice of about one-fifth (15-24%) of the survey respondents’ reported usage.

Now, we often hear: why are the repeaters dead? I interpret these survey results with reference to Figure 3 above regarding the time portfolio spent on 2 meters. Most Canadian hams say they spend between 10 and 50 percent of ALL their amateur radio hobby on the 2 Meter band. I suspect that this is due to the prevalence of short-lived Nets that are on weekly activation cycles but this is speculation. So many hams check-in, have nothing to report, and are quickly off of the Net. Some hams may check-in to many Nets while others just a few (or none).

This time-targeted behavior pattern hypothesis may not explain these survey results versus the mantra that we all tend to hear but it’s one possibility for sure. It does beg the question of what “dead” means in this sense. No one there when a given ham listens for a few minutes? No one responding to a dropped call sign on the frequency? Given these survey results, the use of “dead” may be hyperbole.

Microwave and Super High Frequency (SHF) Bands

Moving into the microwave and Super High Frequency ranges involving the highest band allocations, Figure 7 shows these results of band usage by age. (I have included the 900 Mhz to 2.3 Ghz bands here for convenience, technically not part of the SHF range.) The barriers to getting into SHF operations differ markedly from other bands. There are fewer off-the-shelf commercial radios and associated equipment so homebrewing is almost a perquisite. The equipment and space for homebrewing, for instance, a transverter for an HF or VHF/UHF radio or a horn antenna is not available to every ham operator as they can be very expensive relative to VHF/UHF or HF radios and antennas.

With this preface, there are significant age-graded patterns of usage in this frequency allocation region. Figure 6 displays a stacked bar chart by age group of Super HF band use. This region of band allocation is sparsely used at the highest band of 24 GHz. The users are exclusively in the 40- to 70-year-old groups. On the other end, the 900 MHz region is used by all age groups, especially younger hams. The 1.2 GHz band has a significant group of users, between a fifth and a third of those from age 40 to 80 or more. This compares well with the 5 GHz (5650-5925 MHz) band. The 2 GHz region is close behind. With these relatively new allocations as compared to HF, for instance, there is likely to be increased use. The concentration of use in large urban centers may foster increased adoption since there are more operators and Elmers available in those cities.

With this in mind, Figure 7 shows that younger hams do operate in the various SHF bands (slightly less than one third). There is a spread of participants across these individual bands, too. Most of it is in the 900 Mhz to 5 Mhz range as 10 Ghz and above require quite specialized equipment. As more commercially manufactured equipment comes on the market, this highest set of bands may perk up, too.

Conclusions on Band Use in Canada

There is a healthy use of the amateur radio spectrum in Canada as reported by the hams in this national survey. Two meters is the common band for the vast majority. But HF is a dominant place where Canadian amateurs get on the air, too. The age patterns in band use are not as prevalent as they are in modes of operation (see Full Report and previous blog articles). This bodes well for future band allocations as use is often said to drive allocations.

It is good to see the presence of hams in bands above HF. While some of this is very specialized technology at this point in time, experimentation and innovation in the SHF region will likely yield grand benefits. This national survey confirms these patterns of behavior rather than rely on what is technically hearsay by individual hams. These results should also have importance for manufacturers and, especially, small innovators. They establish a market for such products. We now know that the bands above VHF/UHF have a significant segment of amateurs participating in activities on these frequency regions. Moreover, the mainline HF and VHF/UHF markets are stable, a safe and sound target for product design and sales.