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

Hello and welcome to the 549th installment of Linux in the Ham Shack. In this deep dive episode, the hosts go over their own personal histories with studying for the various amateur radio exams. Also discussed are open source software and other online resources for learning information and techniques for passing your ham radio tests. Then we try to pass the exams again as licensed hams. Hilarity ensues. We hope to hear you on the air soon and we also hope you have a great week.

73 de The LHS Crew

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.

The Churches and Chapels on the Air coordinator, John Wresdall G3XYF, sent this notice out this morning:

Dear All,
thanks to all those who have let me know they are operating in CHOTA 2024
on 14 Sept . If you intend to put your church or chapel on the air please let me know. The latest list is periodically uploaded to the WACRAL site when Mike G0RBB can manage it.
73
John G3XYF

John’s email for this is: [email protected]. He is good on QRZ.com

Note: CHOTA 2024 is September 4, 2024. See other posts on this blog about CHOTA. The main site for this event is: https://wacral.org/chota-2024/. My church group had a blast last year!

As ham radio operators no matter what mode you operate one major contributing factor regarding success or failure is the Sun. Propagation reports can be found on the internet, some with cool pictures and others with just lines of data. Things such as solar flares, coronal mass ejection (CME), solar wind and the list goes on. Being able to look at propagation data and interpret it is beneficial. An understanding can help us realize that not all solar flares, CME and high solar wind can mean poor conditions. I found a great site that goes through many areas that make up a propagation report. At some points yes it can get into too much detail but overall I found it to be very informative.
Understanding propagation can be very interesting and also can help you understand the data that is shown.
Here is the LINK to a site that gives great information about propagation.

Here are some propagation sites: 

Solar Ham 

Current ham radio conditions