Promoting Amateur Radio

First of all, I'd like to say that I enjoyed this article, and found it to be well written and timely. There are a few points I'd like to make concerning the statistical methods, but I don't want that to take away from the most important thing I got out of the article.

Chart 4 demonstrates a very important point, the membership of the ARRL is not necessarily representative of the larger population of amateur operators. If the ARRL intends to maintain its position as the de facto voice of amateur radio, they had better wake up and smell the coffee. By lobbying for the no-code Tech license, yet remaining ambivalent (at best) to the no-code Techs, they have set themselves up to lose stature if they do not change some things they're doing. Personally, I think the organization is in need change, and I would rather see them get a tune-up than a tune-out.

Now, a couple of points on methodology:

At the beginning of the article, the author makes the assertion that "Technician class licensees ... now exceed the combined total of General, Advanced and Extra class licensees..."

The numbers indicated by chart 4 do not support this assertion. Chart 4 does show that Technicians are the largest group, but not a majority.

In chart 1, the author extrapolates a 7 year forecast using 2 years worth of data, using a method that appears to be based on linear regression. I'm not going to get into a graduate level statistical monologue, but there are some real methodological bugaboos there...and I don't place much stock in that...

Chart #2...the author fails to account for normal attrition through loss of interest. Some of this bimodal distribution can be accounted for by attrition. Many of the people in the 1-5 year of experience range will not renew their first license. From there, those who stick with it beyond that first renewal tend to stick with it long term.

An alternative hypothesis, based on that chart, is that the amateur radio community is largely comprised of a fairly static base of operators who have been operators for a long time, and second, nearly equally large group in a constant state of flux.

The discussion of the information presented in Chart 3 does not account for larger demographic trends. The 45-54 age group includes the baby boomers, a disproportionately large group of the general population. I would be curious to see this distribution reworked based on percentages of the total, to see where the real differences lie.

To wrap things up, I think there are some things that need a deeper look:

1) Statistics in the context of larger demographic patterns and trends.

2) A more thorough analysis of attrition. Technicians make up the largest group, but part of this is certainly due to the fact that this license is the entry level license of choice; as such, I would hypothesize that this group would see the greatest turnover in membership and suffer the highest (interest, not silent key) attrition.
3) If the data can be made available, I'd like to take a closer look at the age breakdown of the license classes. Living in a part of Florida with a lot of retirement communities, I can tell you that my club's most recent no-code technician class was _filled_ with people over the age of 55.

4) I'd like to compare the membership growth/decline rates to those of the ARRL. At the risk of sounding like some kind of conspiracy theory nut, I'd like to know just how much of what I've been hearing is out of genuine concern for the state of amateur radio, and how much is out of concern for membership numbers, dollars, and the political power that go with those resources.