KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

///////////////////////////////////////////
A reader asks: How many are active?

Posted: 23 Feb 2018 12:10 PM PST
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/kb6nu...m_medium=email


This morning, one of my readers wrote me:

Heres a question for you Of all the Techs and Generals that have gone
through your classes or read your books, how many are active? In my zip
code we have a lot of Techs listed, but very very few have many QRZ.Com
look ups. Many people are nothing more than license holders. I hope thats
not the case with your students.

I replied:

Here’s the way I look at it. I can certainly help people get their
licenses, but there’s not a whole lot that I can do to make them active
amateurs. As you know, it’s relatively easy to get a Tech license, but
being an active amateur radio operator takes a lot of time and a fair
amount of money. I think a lot of people with an interest in amateur radio
don’t think about that before they get their licenses. Only after they get
their licenses do they figure out how much time and treasure that the hobby
requires, and for some, it’s the time, not the treasure, that’s the
limiting factor.

I haven’t done a study to determine how many of the people that have been
in my classes are currently active. What I can say is that a good number of
them are. Here’s an anecdotal observation. At a recent ham club meeting, we
had 40 people there. Of those 40, 11 had been in one of my classes. I don’t
think that’s too shabby.

Here are a couple more observations. One of the guys who attended one of my
General classes, Â*Tom, W8TAM, now has an Extra Class license, and is one of
the top activators in the country in the Parks on the Air program
(https://parksontheair.com/). Another is spearheading our club’s mesh
networking experiment.

Overall, I’m pretty proud of all those guys. I like to joke that I am the
“godfather of amateur radio in Ann Arbor.

Ive written before about a program to help the new Techs get more involved
in ham radio. I still want to do this, but I just dont know how to make the
time for it. Maybe what I need to do is do a Skype thing like I did with my
CW class this fall.

Hmmmmm. TheÂ* more I think about this, the more I like that idea. What do
you think?



The post A reader asks: How many are active? appeared first on KB6NUs Ham
Radio Blog.