It is so obvious that many US hams are there already today. If you are one of the 6% of the US hams with an ICOM IC7300 you are there. Add in the Yaesu and Kenwood gang and that number gets us to perhaps over 10% of US hams (about 77,000).
So, what will make that number jump to 1 out of 2 (50%). That my friend is the turf of the psychologists, marketing guys and the entrepreneurs. It also is a time factor as unlike Twitter (X) and Tik Tok it will not literally happen overnight.
Of the factors, the psychology associated with the switch is perhaps the elephant in the room. We know that yearly in aggregate Billions are spent on trying to figure out how to entice you to try a meatless piece of meat that has no meat products whatsoever. Or marketing a new type of exercise machine where simply looking at the machine will cause a weight loss. Or selling pantyhose to a market that likely wears nothing under their outer clothing.
The switch to SDR is a similar problem with the added complexity that what is needed to do SDR is in a postage sized black IC with one hundred connection points, our FPGA. When you look at an FPGA it is hard to see the circuits used to decode and encode an SSB signal.
But something like below you can see how you have and incoming signal that is split into two signals paths and applying a Local Oscillator to the detector/encoder devices two signals 90 degrees out of phase, you arrive at two signal streams that are one In Phase "I" and one 90 Degrees Out of Phase or Quadrature "Q".
Some bright guys figured out how to use a computer sound card to process the I and Q information as it is in the audio range or Zero IF.
But the I and Q approach is not the current topology of choice as the Direct Digital Conversion (DDC) is the soup de jour. This approach essentially uses a high-speed ADC (Analog to Digital Converter) to down convert the on the air signal to a digital waveform. That is another factor, the math to do the signal processing goes beyond 8th grade Algebra and uses Fast Fourier Transforms and Hilbert Transforms.
Just to give you a giant-sized headache here is the Hilbert transform.
The psychology aspect of moving to SDR is to not focus on the math or that you cannot see a resistor or capacitor and simply realize you are a user of the technology. That is a hard nut to crack as it removes an excuse. Well, I can't see it, so it is not useful. My ears sure can tell the difference when you apply the Thetis noise reduction algorithm. Basically, it is the psychology of moving the boundaries of the individual ham comfort zone. Many will never move and are in the other 50% while many will move albeit kicking and screaming.
For many the thought of a computer embedded inside of an old analog radio is simply scandalous. Enter the time factor where it will take time to absorb the reality of the SDR shift, or they become a SK and removed from the mathematical set of non-believers.
Small sidenote regarding the passing of my XYL. I was contacted by this nice lady who runs a grief group at my local Catholic church. She had kind of a script like are you eating and I shared my URL for the pastapete.com So it was not a matter of not knowing how to cook!
She next stressed the importance of having things to do aside from staring at 4 walls. I mentioned that I was a ham and had multiple websites and a blog. She then shared that her dad was a long-time ham and physician. He was an avid homebrewer and for a time they lived in a remote part of Alaska where he was like the only doctor covering a large geographic area. Now here is the cool part. At his funeral her brothers made a Morse Code tape where the message being played in Morse was this is my last QSO now going QRT and signing off with 73's. It doesn't get any better.
Them that know can make it go and are already doing SDR.
Start Here: www.n6qwradiogenius.us for more info on homebrew SDR.
73's
Pete N6QW