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I have been a ham since 1960 and while there have been many periods of inactivity during those years, I have maintained my interest in this wonderful hobby. When I got my license, I was 15 years old, a high school sophomore and I had a part-time job at a local grocery store. With the money I made, I was finally able to purchase a transmitter kit from Heathkit and a general coverage receiver from a local ham radio store. My total expenditure was around $200-$250, a fortune at that time, but one which was still achievable. Today, the average teenager who would like to get into ham radio is shut out by the exhorbitantly high prices charged by the equipment manufactures. A good quality transceiver is easily $2,000 and up, a tremendous sum for something which can be used only to talk to people he or she has never met, a purely recreational device. What parent would even consider putting out that kind of money for a radio? Even if my child had the money, I, as a ham and a parent, would strongly counsel against it. For that amount of money, the child could buy a Pentium-class computer system and a large amount of software, a purchase which would serve him or her far better than a radio. And a $2,000 radio can't surf the net, play games, help with homework or give access to an unbelievable amount of information; all it can do is let him or her talk to people in all parts of the world, something which can also be done on the Internet.
There are many hams out there who will put up the argument that there is a lot of used equipment out there for less than $2,000. Yes, there is, but even those prices tend to be high, far beyond the reach of the average teenager. Why do I care about the teenagers? Because we hams are getting OLDER! When I was growing up in Corpus Christi, Texas, there were at least two stores here that had ham radio equipment. Now there are none and if I want to buy something, I have to go to San Antonio or Houston to get it, or, get it mail order. Plainly put, it is the teenagers who are our hope for the future of ham radio as the current population of hams steadily ages. Just take a look at the members of your local club, if you can find one. How many of them are under 21? When I was a new ham, there were several high school students in the club. Today I would be hard pressed to find a club that is active in the city and which is trying to recruit anyone to this hobby, be they teenagers or older.
As I look through the various ham radio magazines, I see ad after ad for high priced equipment and wonder about the state of current electronics. I can get a $2,000 computer today which can outperform the room-sized monsters of 20-25 years ago. Performance has vastly increased while price has vastly decreased. Why not ham radio equipment? Yes, we are all solid state with lots of computerized whistles and bells to wow and amaze us. But has the equipment really improved that much, does it do that much more. I can talk just as well on my old TS-520S as I can on a new rig. What would I really gain by putting it out to pasture for a new one? Not much, and I have used much newer equipment. Oh, sure, I wouldn't have to tune it up everytime I changed bands and that sort of thing, but, how much is that worth? Not $2,000.
Where is the ham radio equipment company which would like to have an enormous increase in sales? Take a good, hard look at what is really involved in the guts of our equipment and I am sure that most of what is currently out there can be duplicated and sold for $500 - $999. The company which has intestinal fortitude to take a chance and fight the trend towards ever higher prices will have to hire additional workers to keep up with the demand. Again, compare it with the computer industry: as prices DROP, demand and sales go up! I remember one software company several years ago that dropped the price of their flagship product from $495 to $99, and sales exploded, bringing on record profits. Take a hint, manufacturers, take a hint!
If we hams are going to have a viable hobby to take with us into the 21st century, we will have to have new hams to take our place and maybe even swell our ranks to what they were proportionately several years ago. Today, there should be about a million licensed hams in the United States if growth were consistent with the population growth. I don't believe there is anything close to that number. If we can't get the people to come into ham radio because of the initial cost of equipment, even assuming that we are trying to actively recruit them, then where will we be in the not-too-distant future? Out of bands because the FCC will not have to keep them open for us...we won't be there in sufficient numbers to use them and keep the pressure on the FCC to protect them for us. It is up to us as hams to use our buying power to put pressure on the manufacturers to bring the prices down to something reasonable. If we stop buying the high-priced rigs, then maybe they will get the message. If not, if we just roll over and allow ourselves to be overcharged at the current levels, if we don't support the manufacturer who will dare to buck the trend, then we deserve our future fate.
Dan Lane, K5ERV
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