AmateurRadio.com

Is amateur radio in the United States dying? The short answer is NO. But it is CHANGING. Here is why and how.

Author's note: Several months ago, I was contacted by a corporate sales broker to prepare a brief assessment of the ham radio market. This article is a version of that work. It is based upon best available evidence rather than a well-funded deep-dive study of the commercial market for amateur radio.

Those who read online sites devoted to amateur radio, listen to or contribute to on-air rag chews, attend hamfests, or read published media devoted to amateur radio have heard many, many times: amateur radio is “dying”.

But what does the term “dying” mean in this context? The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following definition:

Dying: Adjective. 1. That is at the point of death; in a dying state, close to collapse; 2. That is ceasing to exist, function, or be in use; 3. Esp. of a period of time: final, concluding, closing.

It is clear that the connotation is “ceasing to exist, function, or be in use” by the many hams who claim this.

I address this belief as to whether there is any actual evidence supporting it. Short answer? No. But the hobby itself is changing.

The problem is that there is a disjuncture between the “knower” and the “known,” a well-known philosophical issue in epistemology, going back to Descartes. What these hams “know” is based on several factors, none of which lead to an accurate reading of the larger ham radio “room.” To start, it is based on selective information about the hobby as a whole. I explain why this “information silo” yields an incorrect inference to rank-and-file hams. The elements of how the hobby is changing are described with “best available data.” Conclusions on how these changes are shaping the commercial market for the amateur radio hobby are discussed. In the end, the reader may disagree with my conclusions. I would welcome objective, observable evidence to the contrary as my motivation is simply to better understand the hobby but here is my assessment for my recent consultancy.

Is amateur radio dying? Short answer? No. But the hobby itself is changing.

Selective Information

The widely held perception of the pending “death” of amateur radio comes from a selective set of observations that focus almost entirely on the Baby Boomer generation. This is the bias of one’s “personal windshield” as the basis of knowing.

Here’s what I mean. Driving an automobile to and from a work location, for instance, gives a clear sense of the immediate area of residence, the place of work and the typical route(s) from one to the other. But only during specific times of day when that travel is routine. It rarely gives a complete picture of the communities themselves. For example, freeways cut through neighborhoods without any visibility of them or any inclusion in one’s recollection of what is there, except what is visible via the windshield of the automobile. Contrast this with the use of an aerial view through, say, Google Earth, which allows one to visualize far beyond what the daily drive can allow. This personal windshield view is largely taken-for-granted as observable fact, based on personal observation. This is difficult to challenge by independent facts. But they should be. I do that now.

Collectively, we hams look at hamfests and formal print/digital publications and see mostly elderly hams, members of the Greatest Generation or the Baby Boom. Some, but few, young people. These sources of information largely sample elderly hams since these are festivals organized and managed for the most part by Boomers themselves. (This is what statisticians call a “convenience sample” which doesn’t generalize to a wider population but is valid within the limits of the observations themselves.) The post-Boomer generation participants are geared toward digital media, especially Youtube and such, and are not likely to be nearly as present in conventional print media. Or at a hamfest. (The ARRL has recently been waving its arms editorially to balance this. It has not had much effect in my personal windshield. Has it yours?) Hence, the “personal windshield” suggests that the hobby must be in the process of expiring as is the Baby Boomer generation itself. And that view is powerful at a personal level.

Why This Interpretation is Wrong

This perception is patently false based on independent data, while it is likely very accurate for hamfests. How can a hobby be dying when there are more licensed hams than ever before, some 780,000, according to the FCC? Annual FCC amateur radio license growth is generally 1-2% per year. This out-paces overall population growth in the U.S at 0.5 percent. There are also over 20,000 “repeaters” (think cell towers for ham operators) in the U.S. today (21, 611 as shown on RepeaterBook.com as of a recent check). Each one is installed and maintained at considerable expense by the individual ham or group owning the repeater system. This expense is not trivial. Thus, ham radio numbers are continuing to increase in absolute terms and exceed the rate of general population growth. See Figures 1 and 2 shown below. But why is there the perception of a “dying” hobby in the face of these objectively counter-intuitive indicators? It’s the power of the personal windshield in operation.

There are other social forces at work here, too. The political scientist, Robert Putnam (see Bowling Alone), characterized the social fabric of the U.S. in recent times as declining in social capital, our social connections with each other, promoting the ability to make collective decisions for the benefit of the group. From his group’s website:

Putnam draws on evidence including nearly 500,000 interviews over the last quarter century to show that we sign fewer petitions, belong to fewer organizations that meet, know our neighbors less, meet with friends less frequently, and even socialize with our families less often. We’re even bowling alone. More Americans are bowling than ever before, but they are not bowling in leagues. Putnam shows how changes in work, family structure, age, suburban life, television, computers, women’s roles and other factors have contributed to this decline.

The central premise of social capital is that social networks have value. Social capital refers to the collective value of all “social networks” [who people know] and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other [“norms of reciprocity”].

Social capital works through multiple channels:
– Information flows (e.g. learning about jobs, learning about candidates running for office, exchanging ideas at college, etc.) depend on social capital.
– Norms of reciprocity (mutual aid) rely on social networks. Bonding networks that connect folks who are similar sustain particularized (in-group) reciprocity. Bridging networks that connect individuals who are diverse sustain generalized reciprocity.
– Collective action depends upon social networks although collective action also can foster new networks.
– Broader identities and solidarity are encouraged by social networks that help translate an “I” mentality into a “we” mentality.

How does this matter? Here are some factoids from the Bowling Alone website, as trends over the past 25 years:

• Attending Club Meetings: 58% drop
• Family dinners: 43% drop
• Having friends over: 35% drop

Have anything to do with the hobby? Uh, have you been an officer in a local club or attended a meeting lately? Indeed, it does!

For the U.S., membership in the largest organization purporting to represent amateur radio exhibits a clear “bowling alone” pattern: there are more ham operators than ever but also a sharp and continuing decline in the American Radio Relay Leagues’ membership as expressed as market-share. See Figures 3 and 4 (see the footnote about latest provisional numbers). Looking only at ARRL membership numbers, for instance, would suggest that the hobby is not doing well. This would be a false reading of the actual strength of the hobby and the market it represents. While there has been a significant growth in the number of FCC-granted amateur licenses, the market share of the ARRL has dropped like a stone since the long-time executive leader Dave K1ZZ was named Chief Executive Officer. (These data do not include the past two years in which there is a significant additional drop in League membership after the controversial print QST cost increase.) Looking only at the market share of the ARRL alone would seriously under-estimate the strength of the market for commercial equipment and services to licensed ham operators. I’ll add that only listening to largely inactive repeaters is another brick in the “bowling alone” wall. Thus, the hobby is far more than ARRL membership or repeater use but these are clear indicants of the change afoot in the hobby itself.

[Author's note: the latest provisional membership number I've been given is 137,000, some 15,000 of which are international members. These charts have been updated in recent articles on this blog.]

Any objective reading of the public sphere of ham radio would suggest that at times the League itself represents a dumpster fire of poor organizational performance (just peruse the voluminous posts in various Forums at QRZ.com). (Note: I am a Life Member and an Assistant Director under two Delta Division Directors.) But what is behind this decline in market-share? Could it be the decline in social capital in general, but exacerbated in the hobby by ineffective League operations? This factor affects local, regional and national clubs, too. Here are some thoughts about it and they complement my recent article which goes deeper into the organizational issues.

More Americans are bowling than ever before, but they are not bowling in leagues. There are more licensed hams than ever before but so few of them are members of another league: the ARRL, National Association for Amateur Radio.

Frank M. Howell, PhD K4FMH

The long time question of ARRL’s lack of transparency, except to “insiders,” contributes a restricted information flow about the hobby. From the Headquarters outward, I liken this communication style to a general message of: We are the ARRL…and You’re Not. It reduces social bonds with the League and shuts off bridges that build consensus toward collective action. The MyARRL Voice organization is a direct repercussion of this abrasive communication style by League headquarters.

This stance by leadership and some staff reduces norms of reciprocity, such as when the League calls on members (and non-members at times) for assistance. It reduces the capability in the hobby of effective collective action towards any change heralded as positive by large groups of amateur operators. Examples: when dues are raised and publication prices are changed; for lobbying activities; for recruitment; and other key social actions. The lack of mutual aid in the form of bonding networks (the lack of actually facilitating hams with similar interests in formal ARRL activities) or bridging networks (those who volunteer but are routinely ignored because they are not “known” by HQ staff or have criticized the ARRL in the past). The lack of women or persons of color in many groups is a reflection of this lack of bridging networks to bring them into the information flow that feeds the collective culture of the hobby.

The OMIK organization is an historical example of an independent group formed when active bridging networks by the ARRL could have supplanted the need for it. From the OMIK website, the organization’s own story:

The OMIK Amateur Radio Association, Inc. was founded on August 17, 1952, as the OMIK Electronic Communications Association by Black amateur radio operators from the states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Kentucky to deal with discrimination in the dominant culture and to assist Black travelers with information on places where they could safely eat and lodge. Many ham organizations denied membership to Blacks. Therefore, black amateur radio operators needed a Black Amateur Radio organization with its own nets and other activities.

There are many examples of the lack of both bonding and bridging networks created by the ARRL, whose official description is: “the national association for amateur radio, connecting hams around the U.S. with news, information and resources.” The ARRL is the only organization that claims to represent all of amateur radio in the U.S. (Note that it largely controls the IARU so there is also an international influence by the League.) AMSAT, an international organization, suffers from similar organizational effectiveness issues here in the U.S. (internal strife that often spills over into the public sphere). There are others but these two suffice to illustrate my point.

Clearly, social capital in the hobby is at a low ebb, with the group claiming to represent the hobby at large being a critical actor in this decline. 

Clearly, social capital in the hobby is at a low ebb, with the group claiming to represent the hobby at large being a critical actor in this decline. For a national non-profit with a paid staff who relies heavily on unpaid volunteers, these actions reducing social capital appear to be related to their market share decline. As Putnam described in his highly praised work, the decline of social capital reflects an important social change. But not “death” of the hobby itself.

To further illustrate how the view of U.S. amateur radio as “dying” continues to be perpetuated, we consider who dominates the hobby. By this, I mean who has power to influence what goes on, what major decisions are made, and how are federal regulations that proscribe the hobby’s being shaped? Is any “change” readily confused with a sign of “death” because it is different from this dominant group’s preferences? I wrote earlier about the “secret storm” approaching amateur radio contesting in the U.S., a sign of a cultural change riding alongside the generational demographic shift in the decline of Baby Boomers. If a dominant group is aging out, then that view carries significant weight in perceptions. Let’s try to describe who they are.

The population comparisons for current ham operators and national organizational membership does, in fact, show this Baby Boomer dominance in League membership. We do not know the age of licensees themselves, only those who hold membership in the ARRL. We do know age patterns of licensees in the UK, courtesy of Ofcom. This age pattern is present in both the US and in the United Kingdom. See Figure 5. Membership in the ARRL has been concentrated in age groups over age 50. Most of the leadership falls into this age group as well. This presents another element giving credence to the personal windshields of hams who fill in the blanks when relevant data are not publicly available. The League’s resistance to release any data that they may have to the public merely exacerbates this dependence on merely personal observations alone.

To examine those who are in key positions to influence the League’s actions, consider two elements. Both are available in the Annual Reports of the ARRL. 2022 is the most recent report available on the ARRL.org website, although 2023 has been released during the writing of this article. One, look at the picture of the Board of Directors and other officers (see page 21). Based on subjective appearances, there appear to be very few under age 50. Only three who present themselves pictorially as women. Only one is a person of color and she is no longer a Board member. Two, the major donors are in the Maxim Society Donors group (see page 23). These individuals, couples or organizations have given $10,000 or more over their lifetime. I have not tried to identify the ages of these individuals. A best guess is that the vast majority of the individuals or couples are also over age 50. But I could be wrong. It is safe to say that members of the Baby Boomer (or perhaps Greatest) generation(s) have more political clout in League matters than any other group.

With Baby Boomer dominance in the League, and likely in local clubs and other positions of power, viewing the changes associated with age tend to be interpreted as “death” rather than simply social change. The organization and ways of doing things (culture) is slipping away in noticeable ways. While we need to know much more about the spatial demography of amateur licensees, this pattern itself suggests that what we see in society overall, we see in ham radio. In other words, the dominant group’s view is proffered to be the correct one. At least, in the group promoting itself as the national association for the hobby in the U.S.

But, not so fast! Let’s further examine strategic activity spaces where this decline is already appearing in the hobby. Activity spaces are the concept that describes the collective actions of routine behavior that effectively define the fabric of the hobby itself. Contesting is one specialized activity that is prevalent by Board of Director members and Maxim Society donors. Individual contest (and DX) clubs can be major political actors with donations and other means to sway the ARRL. Changes there could be a canary in the coal mine of cultural change in the hobby. Changing generational demographics is a pressure toward change in the hobby’s organization and market segmentation, but not necessarily death. It just seems like it to those whose activity space is changing out from under them.

Baby Boomers have an expected 10-15 years left in the hobby as of this writing. The participation by hams in contesting illustrates this pattern. See Figure 7 for where the past two decades of contest participants are located, near most population centers in the U.S. and Canada. Based on 20 years of ARRL Sweepstakes data on individual participants (log-submitters), the map below tends to follow the license distribution across North America.

The results are not positive for typical CW contest participants, perhaps the most traditional activity space in the hobby. There are about 10-15 years left in the viability of this market segment.

Using these data on individual participants in the ARRL Sweepstakes Contests, I’ve estimated their age-based mortality schedule. The results are not positive for typical CW contest participants, perhaps the most traditional activity space in the hobby. There are about 10-15 years left in the viability of this market segment. Participants in the elite ARRL contests exhibit a decided pattern toward nearing their end of life or departure from the market due to infirmities. See Figures 8 and 9. The red line in these graphs are the average age at death for members of that birth cohort. About one half live less with the remainder living beyond this age. The aging pattern—the caterpillar’s hump—is moving past the benchmark of 65 in each subpanel. This is moreso for CW operators than phone. In Figure 9, the expected years until Silent Key status demonstrates the “secret storm” of CW operators substantially declining in the near future.

This is a signal event in this cultural change. It is one that the QST Editor declined to publish for it presented a “too negative of a tone,” although there were no technical limitations to the study. This intentional lack of transparency in objective research using the ARRL’s own data further degrades the social capital in the hobby.

Phone operators, while aging, are where newcomers to this ARRL Contest are entering. Thus, the importance of CW operators in the hobby, to the extent that this pattern generalizes to other contests, will shift toward phone operators. This is a signal event in this cultural change. It is one that the QST Editor declined to publish for it presented a “too negative of a tone,” although there were no technical limitations to the study. This intentional lack of transparency in objective research using the ARRL’s own data further degrades the social capital in the hobby.

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The knee-jerk response to this “demography is destiny” impression is to chase children as the recruitment answer. This is because the origins of the hobby itself was based almost wholly on young teens and adults (see Howell, “Amateur Radio’s Lost Tribe: The ‘Blue-Collar Scholars’ Who Started It All.” The Spectrum Monitor, February 2022; available at FoxMikeHotel.com). Many Boomers got involved as teens but many of them did not. (For evidence on this from a national survey of Canadian hams, see this article.) The fastest growing segment of amateurs is comprised of “late-in-life” hams. See Figure 10. While ham licenses grow about 1+ percent per year, However, growth in the “late-in-life” ham category (those who are at least 50 years of age but only licensed 10 years or less) was an annual 2.5 percent.  (see Howell 2013). Late-in-life hams have several very desirable market aspects: peak earnings, empty nest (fewer household obligations), and disposable income. Thus, chasing children is not the only marketing strategy for amateur radio as a hobby and the Boomer segment should not be written off for well over a decade. (Note that Boomers also have grandchildren.)

Late-in-life hams have several very desirable market aspects: peak earnings, empty nest (fewer household obligations), and disposable income. Thus, chasing children is not the only marketing strategy for amateur radio as a hobby and the Boomer segment should not be written off for well over a decade.

Changing Organization Due to Demographic Shifts

As noted above, the emergent market for amateur radio lies in HOW ham radio’s activity space is changing. In social science, the activity space designates the “set of places individuals encounter as a result of their routine activities in everyday life.” (see Cagney et al.) Hams writ large do not consider how much the technology is driven by the organization of activities. Ever wonder why one’s CQ call is not answered even though propagation conditions are good? Contests are perhaps the purest example, containing dates, times, frequencies, and rules of competition. EmComm via ARES is another example with rule books, exams, meetings, and random meetings during times of emergencies. Satellite communications depend on the relative passing of particular satellites over locations on the Earth. There are others but the “activity space” concept is a central one to the hobby of amateur radio, much more than is formally recognized in ham radio publications and books. Getting an answer to one’s call of CQ is very different when there is a contest on the calendar, regardless of the propagation conditions.

Hams writ large do not consider how much the technology is driven by the organization of activities. Ever wonder why one’s CQ call is not answered even though propagation conditions are good? Contests are perhaps the purest example, containing dates, times, frequencies, and rules of competition.

For amateur radio, the highest status activity has been “contesting” and “DX chasing.” Compare the publication and website space devoted to these two activities, a sign of status-allocation. The ARRL and numerous other groups organize competition—which are part of a purported “radio sport”— where operators compete for the most contacts. Certain contacts with other participants are worth more than others with elaborate rule-sets for scoring. These are contests. Chasing DX (distant stations) is hunting but for stations in geographic locations that are challenging to contact (not unlike some fishing competitions, for instance). This activity space has been the dominant high-status arena in the hobby for decades, generating its own label of the “contesting mafia.”

Consequently, wealthy hams have spent upwards of $1M or more to guarantee their success through the construction of “super stations” and very elite teams of contesters. Or, send expeditions to faraway places to get on the air so that DXers can try to contact them and therefore “work” the rare location. These activities tend to cost increasing amounts, much more than most hams spend in their career on personal equipment. But as the technology required for being successful to accrue to status symbols of winning major contests has made it possible for fewer hams to accrue these status symbols, it has made it especially difficult for those who are members of younger generations to compete on any type of equal footing. Contest organizers have tried to “handicap” this structural inequality through classes of competition so as to maintain participation levels. But, contesters also know which porch the Big Dog sits upon. Just listen. You’ll hear them barking.

The Cheese Has Moved

Migration and housing patterns have land-use restrictions constraining traditional “high status” activities (e.g., contesting and DXing) requiring towers, high RF power, space, and time to operate. Because of the relatively small number of relatively well-to-do amateur operators who can build (or get access to) super stations, there has been a radical shift in activity space from high-cost, relaxed land-use restrictions, to portable, QRP, and modest satellite operations. These can be conducted in backyard patios, nearby parks, and in temporary vacation or other locations without many issues if the activity space to support them is organized. This organization is fundamentally no different from contesting or DXpeditions.

The cheese in ham radio’s activity spaces has moved intergenerationally…

The activity space of operating in parks began in 2016, by the ARRL I hasten to add, and has continued with phenomenal growth by a third-party after the League washed it’s hands of the NPOTA activity sponsorship. As of June 2019, “parks on the air” (POTA) operators had recorded more than 538,000 contacts. Started by a small group of U.S. volunteers in 2016, POTA now boasts 1,500-plus registered users and has continued to grow at an unprecedented rate. Why? Because it is an activity space in which any licensed ham operator can succeed.

A second activity space that is rapidly growing is satellite communications. The AMSAT organization says that there are at least 20 satellites in orbit that facilitate amateur radio communication. Almost all US astronauts on the International Space Station are licensed hams, since it is a “social media” for them during their off-times which in space. In 2019, there were over 130,000 members of the AMSAT organization. (I am an AMSAT Life Member.) The growth in satellite use by hams is a second activity space that is seeing increased market focus by manufacturers and hobbyists. Why? Because a wide variety of amateurs can participate successfully in working Sats!

Using data from a national survey of Canadian hams by the Radio Amateurs of Canada, Figures 11 and 12 illustrate this path of how the “cheese” has moved generationally in certain patterns of activities. We do not have similar data for the U.S. Canadian Boomers are more frequently using traditional activities while younger hams engage in new ones. This does not directly represent “death” of the hobby that Baby Boomers practice but the emergence of the operational style that younger hams enjoy.

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As a youngster in the 1960s, I vividly recall the AM operators on 75 meter phone grousing about the “mush mouths” using the new-fangled SSB. Many AM ops didn’t have a BFO on their receivers; hence, the name. What’s the latest canary in the coal mine?

The explosion of computer-assisted digital data modes may well be a similar social change rather than “death” of the hobby. As noted in my full survey report and in a previous article on this blog, contesting in Canada ranks 15th whereas portable operating is 9th in a list of activities pursued in a given month. Interested readers can see where CW operating ranks in this list. The results are not inconsistent at all in the ARRL Sweepstakes results that Dr. Scott Wright and I obtained. They are prescient indicators of cultural change on the back of demographic shifts but had “too negative of a tone” to warrant publication in the flagship magazine of the League, QST (also noted above). Somehow, an ostrich comes to mind here.

These are behavioral measures of age-graded (and generational) change in how the hobby is being pursued. Boomer hams are following traditional activity space activities while younger amateurs are helping define newer activity spaces. Boomers see death while hobbyists of a younger generation see excitement in different modes of operating. This is change afoot rather than death-and-dying as perceived by those with the most tenure and influence in the hobby.

Boomers see death while hobbyists of a younger generation see excitement in different modes of operating. This is change afoot rather than death-and-dying as perceived by those with the most tenure and influence in the hobby.

Market Presence of Monetized Youtube Channels Focusing on Amateur Radio

If the hobby were dying, would there be an online monetized media segment developing around it? Would some hams claim that this is their sole source of earnings? Not likely. Certainly, those hams do not see evidence of the hobby’s passing. Rather, it is a new, innovative venue for the creation of entertainment content for the ham community and the commercial sector, the latter of which often invests donated equipment for review to these hams. A sampling of popular video channels on Youtube reveals that younger content creators are surpassing the estimated subscriber base versus those in the Boomer generation. See Figure 13.

Two of the most popular channels produced by members of the Baby Boom generation — Jim Heath W6LG and Dave Casler (who is a contract employee of the ARRL) — have subscriber levels and views much lower than many younger content creators. Two of the largest ones, Ham Radio Crash Course at 300,000 subscribers and Ham Radio 2.0 at 153,000, far exceed those produced by Boomer-age creators. The largest one is mostly technically-oriented: Mr. Carlson’s Lab at 371,000 subscribers. (One can debate my allocating him to the “young” group.) These revenue data are estimates and are used for illustration. The fact that the revenue numbers are estimates based on the source’s use of the Youtube algorithm for monetization does not change this group’s presence in making money off of content creation in the hobby. The monetized Youtube arena demonstrates a clear and strong presence that is a more effective way to reach younger amateur radio operators and those who wish to become licensed than print media like QST and the recently defunct CQ Magazine. It seems to be growing whereas print media is not. It would be inconsistent with a hobby space that is in the throes of imminent demise.

General Public Interest in Amateur Radio

What is the interest by the general public in amateur radio? Would a substantial decline in measure of this interest suggest the demise of ham radio? Possibly. But amateur radio has long been out of the public’s eye except during widespread emergencies. Nonetheless, examining these patterns would be useful for any dramatic patterns in this aspect of the health of the hobby. I use a form of Google’s search engine to examine amateur radio’s search patterns.

The trend in Google Searches for the term “amateur radio” (see Figure 14) currently remains fairly flat and not in decline, once the period post-Hurricane Katrina is ignored. The decline from the period beginning in 2004 arises from the central role that amateur radio played in the emergency response operations involving Hurricane Katrina and the high level of news media coverage of those activities.

The relative number of searches—a common mode for determining general public interest in a topic—has remained fairly flat since 2009, a sign that there is no reduction in general interest by the public in amateur radio. Thus, while this form of measured public interest among Internet users does not show an increase in information-seeking over time, it does not show much of a decrease either.

Conclusions on death-and-dying and living all at the same time

How is it that the hobby can be dying and living all at the same time? Schrodinger’s cat may be in the box but there’s a simpler explanation.

Baby boomers have dominated the amateur radio hobby for some decades now, obtaining positions of power in the major organizing associations, the ARRL, AMSAT, and others. The death-and-dying view of the hobby is rooted well within this dominant generation. The definition-of-the-situation, as the social psychologist W.I. Thomas famously said, is real in it’s consequences if men define them as real. Boomers have largely been the group defining the hobby for a long time. From their personal windshields, this is what they see. But it appears largely incorrect today.

We have shown that there is no empirical evidence that the amateur radio in the U.S. is dying. Far from ceasing to exist, the hobby is merely changing, and in line to change significantly over the next decade or so. These changes will cause the market to realign to new elements of activity emphasis and new activity spaces while some traditional practices in the hobby may well fade away.

The often-heard claim that any organized activity is dying is usually a sign that it is merely changing in significant ways that do not fit the definitions promoted by power brokers whose voice defines the situation. The scheduled exit of the Baby Boomer generation gives this appearance because members of this generation are in the positions of power and control in the organized aspects of the hobby. See the Board of Directors for the American Radio Relay League or the AMSAT organization as examples. Younger generation ham operators participate in the hobby differently and are engaging in a break from the activity spaces ensconced in the hands of Baby Boomers. For instance, the new World Radio League and its associated learning company, HamRadioPrep.com, tell me that they have a tremendous youth market for both companies. It is largely in the approach to the youth market. The market for amateur radio products and services is far from being in rapid decline. Astute targeted marketing using data such as these presented here, as well as new professional data collections, can guide the production and profitable sales regimes through the next several decades.

This has consequences in the hobby in several ways. More rancor and conflict, clearly present on certain common websites and social media groups, and dramatic losses in paid membership in the ARRL are two of them. One can see in the common watering-holes that post-Boomer hams and Boomers frequent are largely segregated into difference locations. The age-graded patterns of operator behavior, coupled with a serious lack of younger operators joining the gray beards in the League, is the instrumental canary in the coal mine of this generational shift. The institutional decline in Boomer-dominated groups will foster change at a faster rate.

This means that major manufacturers and resellers of gear for the amateur radio hobby will undergo some repositioning of products. For instance, take a look at the past five or so years in products for portable operating. It is substantial, fostering the emergence of many cottage industries of small portable radios and accessories specifically designed for outdoor operating. The rise of the premium transceiver has focused on the market segment willing to spend several thousands of dollars for a prized, well-featured transceiver. As the Baby Boomer market declines, this market segment may well change, too.

Should the number of FCC granted amateur licenses go into significant decline, would that then mean the hobby is dying? Was it viewed as dying some 20-30 years ago when there were far fewer hams? From the 1970s onward, the number of licenses grow at a fast pace (see table from the Clear Sky Institute above). Should they plateau to the population adoption rates of, say, 1980, that would not mean death of the hobby. It would mean change and perhaps in ways that younger amateurs would see as positive and beneficial. (“OK, Boomer. Time to move over…”)

Perhaps ham operators should recognize that their personal windshields are comfortable and useful but not very good for grand generalizations like the hobby is dying. Yes, an activity space that is well known as “hamfests” are attended mostly by Baby Boomers. Some will die off due to both lack of attendance, sales by vendors who do not get their needed return-on-investment for attending, the aging of hams who organize and operate them, and fewer in the market to go to them. Some already have. Hanging out on Discord servers, Youtube interactions, Zoom group gatherings, and online ordering will likely replace them as well as make them not “periodic” but in near real-time. Print media will evaporate due to cost, storage and lack of interest but interactive digital media will offer more and better information to readers. Remember those aggravating “mush-mouth” SSB operators? They rule today. Who will define-the-situation tomorrow?

There was a time that the American Radio Relay League was the dominant organizer of amateur radio in the United States. In fact, at their 50th Anniversary, the ARRL General Manager John Huntoon made this statement:

“In May, 1914, a small band of radio amateurs led by the late Hiram Percy Maxim, of [Maxim] Silencer fame, and Clarence Tuska, started a national organization and named it the American Radio Relay League. Since that time 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.” (Huntoon 1965).

John Huntoon. 1965. “Forward.” Fifty Years of ARRL. Newington, Connecticut: American Radio Relay League.

They may still be as this is written. But with the dramatic and continuing drop in market share in the League’s membership over the past decade, corresponding to when the long-time administrator at ARRL Headquarters David Sumner was named Chief Executive Officer, coupled with the palpable and escalating displeasure of a significant majority of licensed amateurs with the National Association, it is hardly the case that the modern story of ham radio in the U.S. solely belongs to the League’s public relations department. This decline also contributes to the Baby Boomer impression of the hobby’s death: wasn’t it largely invented by Maxim and the League in Newington, CT?

Indeed, as I documented in my 2021 article, “Amateur Radio’s Lost Tribe,” it was Clarence Tuska who actually taught the “novice class” Hiram Maxim and his son about the wireless (for an audio version of my article, listen to Episode 363 of the ICQ Podcast). Tuska did it with the parts purchased from Hugo Gernsback’s Electro Imports company in New York City. But the League has no coverage of the first person, Hugo Gernsback, to nationally organize operating wireless enthusiasts in these United States in any of their publications, for it diminishes their claims that amateur radio is what they say it is. This precipitous decline in market share is coupled with the current ARRL CEO’s claim that there are only about 250,000 “active” U.S. hams so their 175,000 137,000 or so members contain the vast majority of them. The Emperor’s Clothes could well be vanishing.

This is change afoot, not the hobby’s demise, for that history will be written by the generations coming after the Baby Boomers. That may not involve the American Radio Relay League.

Progress involves change. Those vested in the status quo rarely see these changes as progress but death. It rarely is. I can find no evidence that ham radio is dying. So, I will return to the beginning.

Amateur radio is not:

• at the point of death
• in a dying state
• close to collapse
• ceasing to exist, function, or be in use
• in a final, concluding, or closing state

The change is largely institutional. There are more activity spaces in the hobby now, organized outside the auspices of the ARRL, leading to other groups shaping and defining what the “history” of amateur radio will be in the future. The demographic decline in the Baby Boomer generation will fuel this transfer of stakeholdership from the National Association for Amateur Radio to a number of others. The emergence of so many cottage companies who offer exciting products into the market is likely to grow. The largest manufacturers may well continue their success but in the market segment who will invest thousands of dollars into equipment that they are able to fit into their residential constraints. This is change afoot, not the hobby’s demise, that that history will be written by the generations coming after the Baby Boomers.

The only thing that would mean the death of the hobby of amateur radio would be if Congress and the FCC abolished the legal service.

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.“

Wizard of Oz (1939)

This line from the classic movie, Wizard of Oz (1939), largely tells the tale of this article. The sidebar statement to the audience revealed that what was actually going on if the audience was astute enough to see it was not what was being presented to the audience in the play itself. Social scientists use this metaphor to describe organizational behavior as “front stage” (intended to be seen by the audience) versus “back stage” (not intended for the audience).

It is this distinction that I focus on in this article. I illustrate how the current voting options for League members just don’t elect hams to positions with the power (rather than authority) to effectively represent them in ARRL actions, policies, and service. I suggest one approach to resolving this problem by arguing that it’s the organization rather than “bad” hires. I outline a significant change in voting options that will force the League’s leadership to be responsive to members for they will then actually elect leaders with the authority and power to serve them. Or face shortly being unelected as part of the political process of a constituency voting. Finally, term limits would keep new blood in leadership positions which will reduce the estrangement between the League’s service and those they say they serve.

“In ham radio, if we don’t say it happened, it didn’t. If we say it happened, it did.” Now-retired ARRL HQ Staff Member over lunch at a Five Guys restaurant to Frank K4FMH

My belief is that members left partly because of changes in QST, both in content and the disputed contract of printed copies associated with pre-paid multi-year memberships, and partly due to the frustration of their concerns just falling on deaf ears for a long period of time. A thorough reading of social media and website Forums will clearly make this case to all but those who have their heads in the sand. My sense is that the QST debacle was the proverbial straw and camel issue.

I’ve characterized this stance by the ARRL toward the marketplace in years past by using a paraphrase of the old Saturday Night Live news anchor, Chevy Chase, as Newington’s collective message to the members. All too often it’s: We’re the ARRL and you’re not. As I noted in a previous article, 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.” That perspective, unfortunately, has been present in the culture of the ARRL’s Headquarters at least since their 50th anniversary. Chickens have to roost somewhere. They may well be coming home now.

Current ARRL Status in the Marketplace

In the past several blog articles, I documented how the membership of the League has dropped like a stone. If we accept what the ARRL’s CEO says are the reasons, it’s that hams who are not members just aren’t “active” hams. Unless you think that Canada is another planet instead of a previous Section of the ARRL, evidence from our friends north of the border shows that just is not supported by national survey data. Read the 2023 Annual Report and we are told that 75% of all new Technician licenses are “inactive” within 12 months. Assuming they joined the League upon licensure, is that the cause? (I show that it’s not very likely that they did but I’m just giving them the best possible scenario.) But, alas, they can’t or won’t produce the study cited in their Annual Report. Unless the reader, like many in ARRL management, have their heads in the sand on observable data, the ham radio market is doing just fine, thank you. But the League is simply not serving them as so, so many licensed hams want and need them to. After all, their slogan is the National Association for Amateur Radio.

After interviewing a number of American Radio Relay League staff at HQ as well as current and sitting Board members over the past few years now, I learned quite a bit about the lines of power being played out behind the curtain of the official organizational (authority) chart in the public-facing page at ARRL.org. As we will see below, these are the power relationships that stretch behind the “front stage” lines of authority, although it’s the latter that precipitates the fundamental sources of the today’s mess. I’ll explain in detail below.

None were willing to go on record for quotation right now because of reprisal fears for them (or their partners). Some did commit to a public interview in the future should leadership change. The reader would be highly surprised if they knew who in the organization talked frankly about the "inside baseball" of League management in recent years as some publicly appear friendly to the current regime at ARRL. They all say they just do not approve of how the main office, and the venerable League itself, is being managed.

If you’re a reader who can’t deal with investigative journalism ethics like this, turn your browser to another website. (As The Smoking Ape says on his Youtube Channel, go watch some cat videos, lol.)

We will need to cover the “front stage” of what the League presents as the organization and lines of authority before we get to the “back stage” of informal power relationships. I know, boring, right? But important nonetheless. I then produce a sociological assessment of what I see based on my decade experience as a volunteer “flunky” in the Delta Division, fleshed out by my discussions with key actors, frequently “in the room” when power relationships actually determine what the League does. Many of the existing Board, Officers, and key staff will do backflips to show how this analysis is wrong. But my perspective is from the member’s view and their vested interests, not those of the Board, Officers or HQ staff. This nearly always puts those in positions of authority on the defensive. You decide from your experience how accurate my analysis is. Some Board members who privately do not like the autocracy have said it’s spot on…but don’t quote them (yet).

The ARRL Okey Doke In the Organizational Chart

There is a key difference between authority and power. The League officials will focus on authority in the organization chart they make public whereas I will emphasize power relationships:

“Authority is commonly understood as the legitimate power of a person or group over other people…the terms authority and power are inaccurate synonyms. The term authority identifies the political legitimacy, which grants and justifies rulers’ right to exercise the power of government; and the term power identifies the ability to accomplish an authorized goal, either by compliance or by obedience; hence, authority is the power to make decisions and the legitimacy to make such legal decisions and order their execution.” Wikipedia

There is a wide gap in how the official organizational chart says the League operates relative to members and the power relationships that actually make decisions affecting the membership.

To a sociologist, organizations have formal (organization chart) and informal (routine behavior) lines of power, authority and processes for entry into official offices, such as President. Note that the power to control activities may or not be legitimately authorized by the organization itself. There is a wide gap in how the official organizational chart says the League operates relative to members and the power relationships that actually make decisions affecting the membership. Now, this is based on information I’ve gathered through interviews, whether completely reliable or not, but they paint a consistent picture. My professional analysis of a organization as a member has put this into a schematic framework that fits that picture. Bear that in mind. As I noted above, how good of a fit is it for what you have experienced?

My focus is on how members fit into the chart to have an adequate “say” over League matters as reflected in the “back stage” arena. The official organizational charts, narrative text about positions, and such will stand on their own as the “front stage” of the ARRL. The reader will largely see why so many former members just gave up in frustration in recent years. The old saying, “you can’t get there from here,” seems to apply in that what members can vote on leads to little or no authority to enact policies, practices, or actions desired by the members. It’s because the “man behind the curtain” is insulated from any short-term actions by those elected to represent members and their desires for League action.

The old saying, “you can’t get there from here,” seems to apply in that what members can vote on leads to little or no authority to enact policies, practices, or actions desired by the members.

Formal League Organization

Bear with me for a moment on this section as it is important to see what the front-stage in the play is presented to the audience of members.

The ARRL website has a listing of the “organizational structure” of the League. It also has a page for Officers in ARRL. There’s a Field Organization page as well. If you’ve not done so, it’s worth reading. Carefully. Just don’t assume you know what the authority and duties of a position name entails without careful reading, such as the President.

Here’s an excerpt from the Officers page:

Note that the President mainly presides over Board of Directors meetings and is the “face” of the ARRL to several external audiences. Members have no direct say in who the President is because, unlike most other associations, they do not get to vote for this position. This person does make Standing Committee appointments. These Committees are the bowels of the League’s bureaucratic machinery. Issues can move quickly or stay for years, backed-up in Committees. We will see how this movement is shaped below through informal power of the CEO. The President has a cascade of Vice Presidents who manage various tasks. Most come back to the Board for consideration rather than direct action. At times, the CEO just does things without formal Board authorization. The reader might think that the President of an organization is the proverbial Big Kahuna: the boss, leader, chieftain, or top-ranking person in an organization. Not so fast! S/he is not. This is very different from a majority of peer national associations leading amateur radio.

Let’s continue exploring the issue but it has been this way since 1926 (see this PDF file). Remember, the basic organization of the ARRL was established to facilitate regional message-passing (the “relay” in the ARRL), not to be an optimal organizational structure for a national hobby association (international when Canada was an additional Section). If anything, the ARRL is culture-bound, fossilized as some of it may be for today’s amateur radio, and continues myths to promote its importance.

Here’s where the okey doke begins. The CEO rules the headquarters staff and, by this, has the greatest direct effect on the membership experience. Members vote for their individual Division Director who has a seat on the Board of Directors. However, Board members can’t individually change anything except in unison. And they are stymied by infighting coalitions and a desire to become President one day. Remember, a member does not vote on all Division Directors, just one!

The Board selects the President and other Officers, including the Treasurer. The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is technically “elected” as a formality (after actually going through the hiring process) to be a paid full-time employee of the Corporation. It’s typically for a multi-year contractual period, currently remunerated at $303,246 plus another $45,475 in additional monies (or $348,721 per annum) according to the latest IRS Filing. Here’s where the okey doke begins. The CEO rules the headquarters staff and, by this, has the greatest direct effect on the membership. It’s technically under the “direction” of the Board.

But let’s work through that power relationship between the CEO and the Board of Directors. There’s usually a multi-year contract so unless a Division Director elected by constituent members can get enough other Board members to agree, the CEO can literally thumb his nose at a given Board member’s directions or suggestions. But they aren’t actual “directions” unless the Board officially acts on them. A Division Director can just spin and spin while pushing some policy but unless the full Board decides to act, it’s just that: arm-waving motion. And constituent members just wait. Remember the old phrase, when all is said and done, much more is said than done? Little comes out of it in terms of rapid action to solve some membership problem. There are some nominal exceptions, of course, but this is the routine pattern of behaviors. The Section Manager can just email the Field Services Manager. If an SM goes public with criticism of HQ, I’m told by one or more Board members that the CEO starts discussions with the Division Director about the need to replace that SM. Either way, the Section Manager volunteers for the corporation, with almost no power to do anything but simply ask Newington and reference the Division Director.

I want to emphasize that this narrative should not be interpreted to mean that I do not think that Division Directors or Section Managers do much. Officially, DDs are booked with the IRS at 10 hours per week on the average. Section Managers are not listed in the IRS filing for average effort on the corporation’s behalf. From my experience in the Delta Division, both of the DDs I have served as an Assistant Director spent many hours in meetings, phone calls, working emails, and on the road attending hamfests. My SM has served decades in that elected office with a similar workload. While each gets a travel and operation budget, I do not get the sense that it’s very large, certainly not enough to cover actual expenses. They do a lot! But they just do not have the authority, and certainly not the power, to directly effect change at the League HQ except by request. And this is part of the okey doke in the ARRL organization itself. It’s not necessarily the fault of the individuals serving in either of these elected positions! It’s the organization.

I want to emphasize that this narrative should not be interpreted to mean that I do not think that Division Directors or Section Managers do much...They do a lot!

Recall that the President and other Officers are elected by their peers on the Board. I’ll wager that every Division Director at least thinks about becoming ARRL President. Playing the long-game of “being nice” to competitive peers may provide that opportunity but it doesn’t bode well for quick change to benefit members. Moreover, as identified below, each single Board member has no direct power over HQ policy or actions. None. (Show me the money if I’m wrong.) Please note that some HQ staff do work hard to serve members but not all of them. If they are on the naughty list of the CEO, they may leave when they retire and not a single person speak to them as they exit the building because of the informal power relations at work at Headquarters.

I’m told by Board members “in the room” (Zoom included) that the CEO has argued for a change such that new Board members would be just appointed at the behest of the CEO. Afterwards, Section Managers would simply be appointed, too. This all on the predicate of getting individuals with the “best fit” of credentials and skillset. There is an Ethics & Elections Committee that “vets” candidates for fitness-to-serve in an elected position. Corporate loyalty, not representing the interests of members who elect them, is the political third-rail for the organizational okey doke. I was not a direct party to this discussion but it’s been confirmed by enough people with direct knowledge that I do believe it. Whether the reader does it up to them. I am just reporting a relevant set of remarks that outline the current power relationship associated with the Chief Executive Officer position in Newington. The reader will not see this in the public-facing organizational structure.

Let’s directly examine the organizational management chart, as published on the League website:

One sees how HQ is formally organized, all leading to the CEO. There are eight departments, ranging from Operations to Product Marketing & Innovation, in addition to the CFO and assistant. Quite a management load but note the Director of Operations (now vacant due to a separation with the most recent employee, I’m told). Hmm. That person quarterbacks the operations on an daily basis. What does the Chief Executive Officer/League Secretary do? A lot, I suspect. We only know what he tells us. His monthly columns in QST tell us quite a bit.

But he said in his October 2021 QST column, for instance, that “I enjoy starting every day with a coffee and a tour of the social media outlets that feature ham radio, from Facebook to Twitter to Youtube.” A CEO has gotta keep up on that social media! Like many CEOs in the corporate for-profit space, thinking deep thoughts gleaned from Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book or planning a contesting trip to a super-station in the Caribbean with fellow ARRL Officers or staff does immerse the CEO in the culture of contemporary amateur radio. That’s important, right? He has the authority to schedule his time as he sees fit. But there’s an income stream that can be tied to a for-profit CEO’s actions like this. Is there for the non-profit dues-and-donor-driven ARRL? The Operations Manager does free-up time for those “executive” activities at an annual cost of $124,354 plus $20,980 (or $145,334 total) according to the latest IRS filing. That’s what makes it an executive position and not a manager: an executive has a Board and a manager has a boss.

It could well be than many who take issue with League actions (or lack thereof) actually care about the hobby, the organizing group leading it, and their ham radio friends. They recognize that the League is more than the personnel occupying the current positions.

The CEO title emerged late under long-serving David Sumner K1ZZ’s tenure. I’m told by a Board member and staffers from back then that it was largely done as an reward to his years of service, but indeed at Sumner’s vociferous request. Up to that point, the office was League Secretary. But now, with the CEO title, it’s become a boondoggle of struggles over who has the power to actually make policy and procedures enacted by staff at HQ. Just read social media or the Forums or read the mail on the bands.

But the CEO has publicly said that these detractors should just be ignored, largely because they are “self-interested or self-serving” in their complaints (QST, May 2024: 9). He just puts those letters into the recycle bin. The reader can evaluate the context of the CEO’s comments. It could well be than many who take issue with League actions (or lack thereof) actually care about the hobby, the organizing group leading it, and their ham radio friends. But, make no mistake, the choice to publicly redress those who disagree with your management comes from the insular bubble of a CEO that does not face election directly by the membership.

Up to that point, the office was League Secretary. But now, with the CEO title, it’s become a boondoggle of struggles over who has the power to actually make policy and procedures enacted by staff at HQ.

The CEO has a Chief Financial Officer (with an assistant) but this person does not have the usual and customary stated requirements to be an accountant by training or a CPA. This is another surprise in the organizational chart. Anyone, say a history teacher, could become CFO of the ARRL. This person is compensated $200,734 plus $36,017 (or $236,751 total) in additional monies, coming in as the second highest paid employee by the ARRL according to the latest IRS filing. One doesn’t have to be a CPA to run a good spreadsheet but there are usual and customary practices in financial management for a reason. Knowing the fiduciary responsibility to keep secure backups of League finances instead of just relying on a single company laptop is a mere example. One never knows when a hack attack will occur. There is, however, an outside auditor to examine the books for the Annual Report to stay out of trouble with the IRS tax-exempt designation.

Readers should be aware of these formal organizational lines of position and authority. After all, dues are paid and civic engagement to the National Association is warranted, right? But let’s turn to those power relationships that go beyond the boxes-and-lines themselves in the “back stage” arena of the ARRL.

Informal League Power Relationships

Let’s see the voting and power relationships in diagrammatic terms from insider reports and my perspective as a sociologist. (Bear in mind that this is an educated interpretation.) Some of the narrative from above feeds into this articulation of what power relationships factor into this chart. Confidential Board member comments tell me that I have the gist of it.

I’ve put a legend for where members vote and for what position in blue, as well as the voting ability of those elected by members. From those positions, I’ve identified reported power relationships in red. Where there appears to be formal, but weak, authority, I’ve labeled those links in pink.

From just a moment’s study, the reader can quickly see that the two positions that members currently vote for have little to no power to unilaterally affect actions, operations and service at Headquarters! Individually, they can ask but they cannot tell. Members, both current and former, have posted legions of stories on social media and the major amateur radio websites about their frustrations over this. But do not look at the man behind the curtain for it is the okey doke of the CEO’s power rather than authority. Publicly criticize what’s going on behind the curtain and you’re an irrational detractor out for your own fame and glory, says the CEO! (“Second Century,” QST, May 2024: 9). Could it also be an amateur who loves the hobby and the dominant organizing association who sees poor service and is actively commenting to help change it for the better? For many such “detractors,” I believe that it is.

Every two years, members elect a local area official to manage the ARRL Section, or a Section Manager (SM). Most members think that the SM represents their interests and can “go fight City Hall” on their behalf. Wrong! As I noted above, many (like mine) may try but, in practice, SMs themselves are managed by the Field Services Manager in Newington who reports to the CEO. A recent internal battle has resulted in there being a weak line of authority from the Division Director (and BoD member) and each SM in the Division. In practice, most SMs just answer to the Field Services Manager. My SM, Malcolm W5XX, is the longest serving SM in the League but he is largely told, in essence, to “shut up and dribble” on most matters. (My words based on his comments, not his.) The CEO says Section Managers live in different worlds of governance than the Division Directors (see his October 2023 QST column) so they should report to “his” Field Services manager. He makes the claim that the “law” makes them corporately loyal to the ARRL Inc., even though they are directly elected by dues-paying members. Finally, he says they are the “leaders” of the Field Organization, even though he has a Field Services Manager to “manage” them. Okey Doke.

From just a moment’s study, the reader can quickly see that the two positions that members can vote for have little to no power to unilaterally affect actions, operations and service at Headquarters! But do not look at the man behind the curtain for it is the okey doke of the CEO’s power rather than authority.

Likewise, every two years, members elect a Division Director (DD) who sits on the Board of Directors. Each DD has an associated Vice Director who is also elected, often as a slate for a given Division. In practice, this authority is met with weak power to get things done at Headquarters. Why? The CEO has placed an administrative “firewall” between Board members and staff at HQ. See the barrier in the chart above in orange. The Board used to meet in Newington which necessitated communication with staffers on constituent matters by Division Directors but the CEO moved the meetings to posher locales, like Hartford. Don’t worry about your Director’s out-of-pocket expense. It’s covered by his or her travel budget from ARRL. That helped short-circuit face-to-face communication with staff except via the CEO. A Division Director can go through the Standing Committee structure to influence some change. A little lobbying by the CEO, who is a non-voting member of each Committee, and things sort of go how he wants, I’m told by multiple people in the room. Power, rather than authority, the key to the okey doke.

Even if a program is passed through the Standing Committee(s), the CEO can just slow-walk it to death on staff implementation. I’ve watched an approved proposal for club-library map on the League website as well as an ongoing national survey program that I got my Division Director to work through the Standing Committee(s) get to the CEO when he put them in the recycle bin (see his May 2024 QST column on this). The Board did nothing to “direct” the CEO otherwise and they have simply gone into the CEO’s infamous recycle bin. So I’ve witnessed this power relationship myself as well as had it confirmed by Board members and staff. There are numerous other examples but the point is illustrated for the reader.

Even if a program is passed through the Standing Committee(s), the CEO can just slow-walk it to death on staff implementation.

This communications firewall, I’m told, has placed the CEO into an insular bubble allowing him to ignore any requests from a single Board Member should he wish as long as he has enough Board cronies who will not buck his wishes. This prevents any single Director from getting the necessary vote for a given issue to be approved. The CEO may ignore any detractors as he described in his May 2024 QST article and encourage staff members to just ignore members who criticize a policy or action. There is no recourse for members, except to not renew their membership. The recourse for Board members is to go along to get along. For, one day, they too might become President.

These are some of the mechanisms by which the CEO position wields power that outstrips the official lines of authority. There are several. Effectively, the ARRL HQ is a status-dispensing vending machine. Become a public detractor and there will be informal sanctions emanating from the CEO’s power relationships. Appointments to positions in the field services or committees, requests to HQ, and other matters may be delayed or denied for detractors who get on the CEO’s naughty list. All these have been said to me to be true, as a few examples. I am only a direct party to one of them. Did he threaten a detracting blogger with contacting his employer, ostensibly to get him fired? Is there an informal “do not publish” list for QST, managed by the “Four Horsemen” as a member of the review team calls them, for detractors of the League? Did the CEO or his subordinate direct the ARRL VM program to not send a letter of Part 97 noncompliance to an explicitly offending Youtuber for hawking products in his online store while on the air because he helps raise money for the League? Are other services made unavailable to those who offer up nattering nabobs of negativism toward the League? I am only directly privy to one of these events but some people who are do not like this unethical behavior although they feel powerless to prevent it without repercussions. These are some of the informal power mechanisms that stretch beyond the formal organizational chart of authority. The status-dispensing machine will be out-of-order for detractors of the League.

Effectively, the ARRL HQ is a status-dispensing vending machine…The status-dispensing machine will be out-of-order for detractors of the League.

As readers who have been hams for awhile have witnessed since the retirement of David Sumner K1ZZ as (then newly titled) CEO, the Board-CEO relationship has continued to be stymied with this okey doke organizational structure as have (former) member experiences with some staff at HQ. However, I do not see it as only “bad people” at work. (Well, maybe in a few instances.) It is the organizational structure and process that hires individuals from career paths that are ill-suited to non-profit leadership where member service is the prime directive. With this structure, member service was not the prime directive, although there are indeed hard-working individuals at HQ who do render great service to the membership. (I’ve had the privilege of interacting with several of them.) This chart that I’ve created is the embodiment of that ill-fitting organizational structure with power dynamics that serve “executive” worldviews rather than “non-profit management” viewpoints toward service.

I do not see it as “bad people” at work. (Well, maybe in a few instances.) It is the organizational structure and process that hires individuals from career paths that are ill-suited to non-profit leadership where member service is the prime directive.

Note that the President, elected not by members but by the Board, is mainly an emissary to the CEO with Board directives. S/he has no power to require their execution but largely the ability to pass them along. The ARRL is in the clear minority among peer national hobby associations in that members do not directly elect their Presidents. Societies in the UK, Germany, Greece, South Africa, and one of two in Australia all elect their Presidents. RAC and WIA do not, along with the ARRL. The League is very out of step with their peers in this critical aspect of governance.

The Executive Committee has direct bearing in an authority relationship with the CEO. The multi-year contract still protects the almost unilateral authority, and even greater power, over HQ staff and operations. It would still take larger Board action to compel the CEO on any matter to which he objects. This begs the question of how effective and efficient is this organization structure? If market share in memberships has anything to do with it, not very effective and getting worse each year.

Regaining Membership by Changing the Organizational Script

Many ARRL members have just not renewed and walked away. I believe that this alienation is a direct result of having the CEO position and the corporate vision that it perpetuates. Individuals hired from a commensurate candidate pool will behave similarly, although some more than others. Neither of the two positions that members can vote for have sole authority, and little individual power, to effect change that serves the membership. Social scientists have studied the withdrawal effects that alienation from individual agency has on volunteers and the ARRL’s work is driven by volunteers. The “executive washroom” conception of one executive to “run” amateur radio in the U.S. is way out-of-step with the market and present-and-recent membership. For many years, the ARRL HQ was managed by a League Secretary, then General Manager, from which David Sumner K1ZZ was up-titled to CEO. The legacy Secretary position remains as a title-appendage.

How can this dramatic membership decline be changed? I think by changing the fundamental governance mechanisms that produce it. With changes like this, the decline will most likely continue.

One key change would involve the relationship of who is elected by the membership and what power, vested through authority, that these positions have. This would increase the “say” that the membership at large would have over League matters because these individuals would face standing for re-election.

Does the League actually need a Chief Executive Officer? Or, would a Chief Operations Officer, hired from a pool of candidates with experience in the non-profit, membership-driven sector be a superior fit to the ARRL’s needs for service?

The second key change is to undo the gratuitous up-titling that was given to long-serving David Sumner K1ZZ by naming him Chief Executive Officer. Perhaps done in compassion by the Board of Directors to reward Sumner, it has been an organizational yoke around the necks of membership experience. The three successive replacements for Sumner were all hired from what I call the “executive washroom” pool of candidates who focused on being the chief executive from a for-profit corporate career path. They have all failed to lead this non-profit, membership-focused organization as witnessed in the dramatic and continuing decline in absolute membership numbers as well as market share. To continue down this path would not reflect a solid fiduciary relationship to the corporation, to parrot the legelese that is being fed to the Board. To the market of members and potential members, it’s just bad business management.

Does the League actually need a Chief Executive Officer? Or, would a Chief Operations Officer, hired from a pool of candidates with experience in the non-profit, membership-driven sector be a superior fit to the ARRL’s needs for effective service delivery? Note that the current expense for both a CEO and an Operations Manager is $494,055 in the latest IRS Filing. A half million dollars. To put it in perspective, this is what about 8,373 members would pay for membership in the League in a single year (divide $494,055 by $59 annual dues = 8,372.8).

The revised organizational chart with voting and authority lines would accomplish the objectives of giving members significantly more “say” in League matters, issues, and operation. It would also substantially nullify the insular bubble by the top person at HQ.

Here’s the gist of the new script.

• Replace the CEO with a COO hired from the non-profit sector.
• The President and other Officers would be elected directly by the membership.
• The Executive Committee would stagger three Division Directors into the mix, a new one and one departing each year, producing a three-year term for each, with the President as Chair.
• Division Directors would continue to be directly elected by their constituent membership every two years.
• Section Managers in the Division would continue to be directly elected every two years but would now report to Division Directors but be served by Field Services at HQ.
• Institute Streaming of Board Meetings (excluding employment or legal matters) with non-sanitized Board meeting minutes available to every member within one week after each meeting.
• Institute an annual “bottoms-up” evaluation survey of the membership on their interactions with ARRL Headquarters, conducted by an outside party.

Replace the CEO with a COO hired from the non-profit sector. This person does not have to be a licensed amateur radio operator but could become licensed after employment. There is precedent for this (current Director of Publications & Editorial Department, Becky W1BXY, and others). This person would not have “executive” authority but would be a manager of the HQ staff and operation. The key here would be making the President as the executive officer, who would chair the Executive Committee. The COO would report directly to this Executive Committee but would work with each Board member as needed to solve problems for members in each division or Section. The COO would serve on consecutive one-year contracts, hired by the Board. This would facilitate change in the membership service mission of the HQ staff and the COO. While the current CEO just says ignore the complainers, that is simply ignoring what the membership is trying to say, even if it is done in a less than civil fashion. It is the key issue driving membership loss today.

The President and other Officers would be elected directly by the membership, similar to the majority of peer associations, for a two-year term. The President would have succession ability upon re-election for one additional term. The lifetime length of service would be a maximum of four years (or two terms). Other Officers would also stand for direct election by the membership, with parallel service limits, as is the case with many other volunteer membership societies. This would produce movement through this singular executive leadership position, making it open to any member who could stand for election. This will also have the effect of greatly reducing the internal jockeying and political intrigue of the Board of Directors.

The Executive Committee would stagger three Division Directors into the mix, a new one and one departing each year, producing a three-year term for each, with the President as chair. A simple random selection of those eligible could initiate it from the current Board members, staggering the terms appropriately. Should a Division Director serving on the EC not be reelected, another would be appointed by the President to finish that DD’s unfilled term. This committee, chaired by the President, would oversee the COO and the HQ operations on a continuous basis. I could foresee weekly meetings by Zoom of this group. It would, indeed, be more work but this would keep it from being a “title collection” to hang on the wall in the shack. (I’ll simply ask the reader if there’s anyone like this among their local club’s officers.)

Division Directors would continue to be directly elected by their constituent membership every two years. Section Managers in the Division would continue to be directly elected every two years but would now report to Directors and be served by Field Services at HQ. No need for Newington to “manage” SMs other than the routine flow of information. The latter would not have any authority (or power) over Section Managers as it is today. This would increase the interest by rank-and-file members of the League in Section service. Division Directors would work directly with the COO and HQ staff on constituent issues, monitored by the Executive Committee. This does not have to be like the Rules Committee in the U.S. Congress.

Institute Streaming of Board Meetings (excluding employment or legal matters) with non-sanitized Board meeting minutes available to every member within one week after each meeting. Part of the pay no attention to the man behind the curtain charade currently in existence is the highly sanitized Board Agenda and minutes available to the membership. There is no reason for Board meetings to not be live-streamed to members-only except to hide from voting constituents how Division Directors vote and other pertinent officials participate in the meetings. One cannot be transparent by being opaque.

Institute an annual “bottoms-up” evaluation survey of the membership on their interactions with ARRL Headquarters, conducted by an outside party. As a Professor, even after I received tenure, every class I taught was evaluated by enrolled students. I didn’t always like it but it made me a better teacher. An annual evaluation survey of the membership is not difficult to institute through a third party. It is a standard part of formative evaluation research to provide an ongoing tool to improve service delivery to customers, which in this case, is members for the most part. It is common in non-profit settings as well as in many corporate environments. They are usually conducted by outside parties for the same reasons of integrity that independent auditors check the books for the annual report. The results will be professionally summarized with performance metrics and available to members within one month after the evaluation period ends.This will be an instrumental means of helping the ARRL better serve its members. It would be a necessary change along with direct membership voting on the President, other Officers, Division Directors, and Section Managers.

Conclusions

This article is a good faith effort by a professional who has been a consultant to organizations with management issues serving their members, customers, and their market. There would be kinks to work out but my point here is that the long-standing organization of the American Radio Relay League is the problem. I hold no animus to those occupying the positions of authority. They are put there by the system in place. But it is past time to change that organizational chart and how things work in Newington. The canard of “corporate loyalty” to ARRL Inc. as required by Connecticut law is a key part of this okey doke to prevent Division Directors, Section Managers, and Officers of the League from representing the membership. I’m told by other lawyers that this is a misreading of the financial fiduciary elements of the corporate law in that State which is being used as a power relationship by a cabal in office now. The Ethics & Elections Committee, which the President appoints, is the bureaucratic instrument through which that canard is implemented. A straightforward solution IF this interpretation were true would be to move the ARRL Inc. out of Connecticut to another state without such asinine loyalty oaths. But cutting the head off of the organizational snake that is the Chief Executive Officer position is the critical start.

Do I believe that the ARRL Board would even entertain this proposal? Not a chance in Hades. I’m not writing this article to the Board or Officers of the League. It’s written to the marketplace of members (of which I am a Life Member), former members, and potential members. I believe that this outlines the crux of why former members have left in droves and why many are so irate about it. Leaving is clearly their option which I endorse. I also advocate those who choose to stay and demand change in the organizational structure. It’s unclear how best to do that. I’ll explore some options in future articles.

Those employed in Newington are not the only ones who care about the hobby we share or the idea of the American Radio Relay League…League employees are not the League itself as their public relationship system likes to say to us. I hope readers who share those beliefs will work to change what we are getting from the ARRL. That may require drastic steps, including more shrinkage in membership, and competition in the services they provide to members, to push reasonable Directors to see the road ahead.

Let me conclude with the admonition that my writing is far from based upon being irate with any person in the ARRL management, as the CEO has publicly stated most detractors are. Board members will, likely behind closed doors (and email systems), berate and ignore what I’m saying here. Some may even quote things in Latin! There are peers among them who do not like that behavior. To use a frequent phrase by attorneys in letters on behalf of their clients, I am neither “shocked” or “amazed” by the Board, Officers or Staff at HQ calling me names and such. One even called me up and cursed me out a couple of years ago because I asked a simple question on the ARRL Youtube Channel. Nothing was done for that behavior toward a Life Member and volunteer staff, except he got a raise.

Those employed in Newington are not the only ones who care about the hobby we share or the idea of the American Radio Relay League. I became a Life Member and have spent over ten years volunteering for the League’s activities because of that sentiment. League employees are not the League itself as their public relations system likes to imply. I hope readers who share those beliefs will work to change what we are getting from the ARRL. That may require drastic steps, including more shrinkage in membership, and competition in the services they provide to members, to push reasonable Directors to see the road ahead.

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.