CW & Contesting: Ham Radio is Alive!
10,000. That’s another number to tuck into your memory and retrieve when you’re trying to explain ham radio to friends and relatives.
I was encouraged to read that the 2008 CQ WW contests had a record turnout – during the bottom of the sunspot cycle! What’s more, CW logs surpassed SSB logs. Who would have guessed it?
In all, over 10,000 logs from around the world for these two contests.
So, ham radio isn’t dead after all?
Morse Code isn’t a long lost method of communicating?
I’ve now been licensed for 29 years and am still fascinated with many aspects of amateur radio. From time to time, I wonder “what’s bringing in the new blood?”
I ask this as someone who has tried various approaches to marketing ham radio to the next generation:
- Using fishing analogies to explain amateur radio
- Helping boy scouts earn radio merit badge
- Teaching technician license classes at Iowa State University
It seems as though new opportunities to evangelize ham radio are always on the horizon.
We’re all busy lately… life, family, kids, careers, etc.
I’ve been especially busy with my new company (helping companies use EnterpriseWizard to setup online issue tracking software, web based CRM applications and online helpdesks to link support/CRM).
My ham radio hobby provides an excellent break from all that. Glad to hear that rumors of its demise have been greatly exaggerated. Aren’t you?
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Ham radio is certainly not dead and people that keep saying “use it or lose it” are just dead wrong. We are a long ways away from having our bands taken away from us and then auctioned off by the FCC.
I wish I could find where I read it, but in some newsletter I read that a huge chunk of new hams that just got their technician ticket have upgraded. It’s a silly misperception that a bunch of people have that these “no-code hams” are just here to get their tech ticket and won’t even bother to upgrade because they’re too “lazy.” In reality, the FCC hasn’t seen such a large percentage of tech-class hams upgrade to higher license classes in its history.