US ham radio population on the up

Some moderately good news regarding growth in numbers of FCC licensed radio amateurs.

In his latest posting of license statistics to QRZ dot com, George Mc Couch, K3UD, says that it looks like overall Amateur Radio Service numbers have increased by 912 from January through March 2008.

According to George, the Technician and Technician Plus category had large increases while General had small increases. As expected. Novice and Advanced declined.

According to George, it appears as if the Technician license is still the most popular entry to the hobby for newcomers, making good gains over the last 2 quarters. Also, the movement to upgrade to Extra class is continuing.

On the downside, it seems like the large movement from hams upgrading to General after the last round of restructuring has slowed to trickle over the last 6 months.

The bottom line. George says that this is the largest quarterly increase he has seen in a long time. You can read the good numbers on the news pages at QRZ.com under the title Amateur Radio Growth in the 1st Quarter 2008: A look at the numbers. And our thanks to George Mc Couch, K3UD, for his ongoing volunteer effort to keep the ham radio public so well informed.

A direct link to article: http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?t=157889

Source: AR Newsline, K3UD, QRZ.Com