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While hamography is a made-up term, I use it here as a narrative short-hand for convenience. It represents the application of spatial demography to the past-time of amateur radio in the United States. Technically, the peer-reviewed scientific journal, Spatial Demography, states that it “focuses on the spatial analysis of demographic processes. This cross-disciplinary work involves modern demographic data visualization, enhanced geo-referenced data availability, and spatial statistics, facilitated through full color graphics, motion video tools, and (so forth).” The hamography emphasis is the application of the tools and theories from spatial demography to amateur radio. (Note: I founded that journal with Professor Jeremy Porter, CUNY & Columbia.)

This page of the website is organized to share the results of this research into three sections. All are under active development.

One is Maps, including licensed ham operators, ARRL affiliated clubs, and perhaps repeaters in the future. The intersection of the georeferenced ULS license database records with other political, social, and physical spatial layers tell us much more than aggregate numbers do and with greater spatial resolution. The ULS databases from circa January of each year since 2000 have been harvested and geocoding mostly completed. Knowing where certain classes of ham licenses are growing, how long until license holders upgrade, where they (like other American residents) move over time, and so forth is the emphasis.

The second is Trends, where temporal change in amateur operators by location and so forth is represented using tables, charts and graphs. There are several sources of some of these data currently available on the Internet. The ARRL regularly issues reports on growth and change in amateur radio licenses. The reason to include them here is to keep consistency with the research design shaping the spatial displays in maps as well as other analyses. Some other data on topics relevant to amateur radio or technology may be included.

Studies comprise the third section. Some of the issues facing amateur radio as a past time are complex. Yet, we know not nearly enough about them on the basis of national data. I’ll publish some analyses of the data we have available and others that we may acquire in this section of the website.

Links to each section are available in the buttons above.