General Category > Amateur Radio

Age of ham radio operators

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Larimar88:
  :)

RobRich:
Licensed or actually active? ;) I suspect active ops skew heavily to your listed 46+ demographic.

I am not licensed. When I *rarely* do talk on air, it is usually 27.385LSB or similar.

ThaDood:
Awh yeah... I definitely fit the +46 category, but I was 22 when I was 1st licensed. Then again, it was just before the internet hit.

NJQA:
I had a ham license before I was old enough to get a drivers license.  I had many ham friends who were teenagers like myself….and getting a license was more difficult then, including morse code, “secret” test questions and having to go downtown to the FCC offices to take the test.  You were proud to have earned the license as it wasn’t a trivial accomplishment and you did something many adults couldn’t.

You don’t see many young hams these days despite it being easier than ever to get a license.  The kids that would have been prime candidates get distracted by other things like gaming or computers.  The mystery of talking to people hundreds or thousands of miles away seems unremarkable in the days of the internet.   FT8 takes almost all the skill out of making contacts so that it becomes little different than pinging a server somewhere.

People don’t value things that come too easy.

For a variety of reasons, including an aging ham population and new demands for RF spectrum, Ham Radio’s future doesn’t look good.  Which saddens me…

Traveling Wave:
I have been to two ham swap meets in the last two months. Most if not all the attendees are in the 46+ age group.

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