'Ham Radio' Ends April 1, 2017

My Fellow Amateurs,

I wrote the following article in 1997 as an April Fool’s Day article. The impact that although it is fiction, it is somewhat Orwellian in its predictions. Consider my reference to United Global Technology LTD, and compare it to Broadband over Power Lines (BPL). BPL may not be our greatest enemy.

I sent the article to the ARRL, and since it cast them in a dark light, they took great exception to it and informed me that I was in error on the average age of hams. I had stated HF operator license holder age, and they gave the overall ham age of all classes which is much lower due to the No Code Technician youngsters with 2 meter walkie talkies on their belt that were included in the average. They refused to publish the article.

The age problem is now clearly beginning to show it's evidence. Listen to any of the HF ham bands. There are not too many on, with the upper bands totally void. You might say band conditions, but when there are heterodynes and QRM on 11 meters, you should be able to hear at least something on 10 & 15 meters besides band noise. Even 20 meters is getting to be sparsely populated during the day, except for some nets. Listen to 75 meters and look up the calls that you hear. -- Many cases of Octogenarians talking about their geriatric problems and treatment. How long has it been since you spontaneously found someone under the age of 20 on the HF bands? They are simply not very many youth getting into ham radio, especially on HF and those who do soon depart, not to return, if they cannot find anyone of their age and interests to talk to.

Recent license statistics show that our numbers are thinning. Statistically in the next ten years, about 50% of the current General, Advanced, and Extra Class Licensees will become silent keys.

I am afraid that we are seeing the passing of an era..........

Don WØPEA

One hundred years after its inception, amateur radio has come to an end. The hobby once considered by many to be on the cutting edge of technology began to deteriorate in the last decade of the century. Technology advances in computers, cellular telephone, wireless data communication and total global communication via satellite and spread spectrum technology overshadowed amateur radio technology.

United Global Technology LTD, successor to American Telephone and Telegraph, the successful bidder for global High Frequency spectrum, announced today that it will utilize hyper-compressed spread spectrum technology on the frequencies from 3 MHz to 30 MHz to provide data, voice, and video communication globally. The new technology will provide the capability of 100 million simultaneous data, voice and video communication channels on frequencies once used by only a handful of amateur radio operators.

The U.S. President and leaders of the world community met in Helsinki to sign and formalize the world agreement with United Global Technology.

Many believe that the amateurs resistance to change was a major factor in the Federal Communications Commission and similar organizations in other countries in the global community to decide that the frequencies once used by amateurs could be put to better use for the citizens of the world, not just a select few.

Amateurs originally used the Morse Code to communicate over the globe. The amateur radio operators kept pace with the new technologies as they emerged until late in the century, when the Internet first became popular. Morse Code use by the Military, Government and Maritime Services was discontinued during the last five years of the previous century. Internet technology quickly overshadowed amateur radio and the interest in becoming a “Ham” radio operator became passé. This was further amplified by complacency among the amateurs, and their resolve to cling tenaciously to the Morse Code as a requirement to obtain a license.

The American Radio Relay League, once the representative of the amateurs, did not recognize in the last decade of the century that the amateurs holding license privileges that required Morse Code were diminishing due to death and attrition at a rate faster than new licensees. As the turn of the century approached, the average age of the HF license holder exceeded 65 years of age. At the World Radio Conference in 1999, the ARRL staunchly voted to retain the Morse Code as a license requirement after polling the ARRL members that only represented a small minority of the licensed amateurs. When it was finally recognized that the hobby was literally dying of old age, it was too late to make any significant changes to prevent its unfortunate demise.

By the turn of the century the growth that the hobby enjoyed by the initiation of a No Code license was thwarted by competition from global satellite interests with their need for frequency spectrum. The reallocation and sale of frequency spectrum started during the administration of the late President Clinton quickly consumed the VHF, and UHF spectrum that the amateurs had used. The global HF spectrum has now been taken since the total number of amateurs no longer justifies their claim to the frequencies.

An era has come to an untimely end.

Don Thomas, once known as WØPEA, 73 to all and SK……………………….

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