There’s so much evidence that the ham radio population is aging, almost relegating it as a past time of the Baby Boomer generation and it’s predecessor. As a spatial demographer, population dynamics have been a significant part of my academic career. I’ve given some focus to aging, both in the ham population writ large as well as for those who participate in amateur radio contests. Here are a couple of publications contributing to that subject. My first Social Circuits column also focused on it. More likely to come!
Scott Wright MD K0MD and Frank M. Howell PhD K4FMH. ARRL November Sweepstakes as a Gateway to Contesting. National Contesting Journal. September-October. 2021.
Dr. Scott Wright K0MD, past Editor of the National Contesting Journal, collaborated on a study of the ARRL Sweepstakes Contest participants over a twenty year period (2000-2020). The ARRL CEO David Minster NA2AA, a contester himself, kindly directed Bart Jahnke W9JJ to share data with us and to match the call signs to ARRL member-reported birth year. We thank them both for their assistance. Thus far, this collaborative work has resulted in a major study covering the 2000, 2005, 2011 (2010 data were lost), 2015 and 2020 CW and SSB contests. I spent some three months building a consolidated dataset, adding georeferencing information, using the Ham Call database to find addresses for those not in the FCC ULS, and to identify the locale for the 1×1 calls as registered on the website. I then did extensive statistical analysis of the data in concern with Dr. Wright, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Due to editorial decisions at the ARRL, the study is being published in two versions. Scott wrote a popular-style piece with my name as coauthor that is in the September-October issue of the National Contesting Journal. I’ve written the more technical and complete report with Scott as the coauthor that is being published on the NCJWeb.com website as well as here. As Scott said in the popularly-written version, the technical version is more “academic” in style. But, isn’t the ARRL Antenna Handbook? If you are not familiar with sound statistical analysis, it may take a couple of readings but the narrative also tells a story but with data, including graphics where possible and a few tables. Some additional analyses will appear as posts at my main blog, k4fmh.com.
Howell-Wright_GenerationalChangesinContestingFrank M. Howell. Aging and Radiosport. This paper was published as a two-part article in the ARRL National Contesting Journal (Vols 48, No. 4-5, 2020)
Because of the grainy figures in the online version of these two articles, I’ve included more readable ones below. Download a PDF of the paper here.