On June 21st of this month, I will observe my 65th year of being a continuously licensed ham operator. I have held the Novice, Technician, General, Advanced and Extra Class Licenses. In the old days you could hold both the Novice and Technician Class license concurrently. I also have held six different call signs. (KN3IXU, K3IXU, KM6DD, W7FFL, W6JFR, N6QW)
K3IXU (a younger N6QW) in 1959.
A lot has changed in our hobby in 65 years. Now, possibly this is bogus data, but the Bing Co-pilot AI told me that in 1959 the year I was first licensed, there were only 100,000 hams in the US or about 0.06% of the total population (173.3M). That seems like a low number, and I look at that with a bit of skepticism in the same league with a Nano VNA.
That same AI told me there are 775,000 US hams today with a total population of about 342 million or 0.22%. So, in 65 years our ham population has grown by a factor of nearly 8, while our overall population grew by a factor of 2.
Of note, only half the 775,000 US Hams have full HF privileges as the rest are Technician class. Source ARRL.
When I got licensed being a ham was part of an elite group of hobbyists, in part, because of the more difficult qualifications to become a ham.
The ARRL had a harebrained idea that to promote our hobby meant practically giving away a license. Trust me when I got my Extra -- it was not that easy. Now someone who never was on the air, had no previous license and has no technical skills can be an Extra as a first license after passing a rather rudimentary exam.
One other ARRL "stroke of genius" was to shift QST from a DIY journal to a rag focused on selling ham gear and thinking only Contests and Operating. The net effect has been to dumb down what was once a technical hobby. Analogy: from Golfing to Miniature Golf. Today the ARRL is struggling to be relevant as it once was. The Logbook of the World is still down, and we are heading into the 21st day.
While 775,000 is not a sign the hobby has died, it signals that in time those of us who are Old Timer's will be silent keys and there is not a huge queue of new hams to fill the ranks. An untapped resource is not the youth as they have other interests (YL's, Tik Tok and Facebook) but those who retire. This retiree demographic is not chasing YL's and have more than a $1.50 in their wallet.
But also of import is the innovation I saw happen during those 65 years going from Tube Rigs weighing a ton to FPGA based rigs you can hold in one hand. The advancement in technology (from 1959) in the hobby was mostly coming from the US and US Hams who started companies.
Bill Halligan, Bob Drake, Art Collins, Herb Johnson, Leo Meyerson, Al Kahn, James Millen, Faust Gonsett, Edgar Johnson and the most recent Gerald Youngblood (FLEX) are hams that started companies that went beyond the ham market and ended up being government contractors.
In 1959 SSB was just rising with the dawn and most of the rigs cost a king's ransom. A new car could be had for under $2K (VW Beetle) and a KWM2 in 1959 was $1500 with a power supply. Now a cheap new car is $25K and a FLEX will cost you $6K. So, here is an example today, where a new uptown ham rig is a bargain as compared to 1959.
In 1959, many of the lower end AM/CW transmitters were kits (Heathkit, E F Johnson, Knight and Eico) but today most rigs are store bought and made in China or Japan. For certain today, homebrew ham stations are a rarity and long gone are the popular kit radios. I run homebrew rigs, do you? [Check the photo as you will see a Johnson Adventurer and a Heathkit DX-100B. I am also working on a homebrew 10M AM transceiver.]
Going back to the current US Ham population of 775K, if but 1%, are homebrewer's then that is less than 10,000 hams who brew their own. We are indeed a small (but elite) group.
73's
Pete N6QW