ai8o wrote:
The post earlier today in RRAM about the new address on the ARRL
website for AR licensees piqued my interest.

I clicked -on the ARRL web page to look at the numbers.

One thing led to another, and I pulled up some state population
numbers of states with roughly the same populations and compared their
per-capita numbers.

Some quick numbers:

State # of hams State population Ham/resident ratio

Alaska 3466 698473 1/201
Wyoming 1696 544270 1/320
Vermont 2137 621760 1/290
Guam 487 178430 1/366
Wake Island 1 300 1/300
DC 407 599607 1/437

What I found is that there is a significant problem in Washington,DC.

There seems to be a very low number of hams in DC for the size of its
population, both absolutely and per capita.
There are less hams per capita than any other state.
Even tiny Wake Island, way out there in the Pacific Ocean, has a
higher ratio.

There are all sorts of people with professional degrees in DC,
(lawyers, accountants,journalists,etc.)i.e. all of the chattering
classes.
Why do so few of the people in DC have any interest in technical
matters that would cause them to be hams?

How many of the DC professionals actually live in the District? How
many DC professionals interested in amateur radio choose to live in the
city when it might (might!) be a lot easier to put up a decent antenna
in an outlying suburb?

If you ran the numbers including both the District and ZIP codes in
adjoining Maryland and Virginia, would you get something similar to the
other states?

If you ran the numbers for not the entire state of Illinois, but just
within the city limits of Chicago, would you get something similar to
what you get for DC?

--

Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View, TN EM66