Australian amateur population trends 1998 - 2007
| This is an August 2007 update of an article written originally in October 2005. |
Over recent years the number of issued amateur licences has been declining, the trend was about 2.8% pa decline over the five years to 2002.
This has concerned some people, who took the view that the decline was a harbinger of the impending demise of Amateur Radio.
Figure 1 shows the recent history of issued Australian Amateur licences.
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The licence numbers shown in the graphs at Oct 2005 are aggregated on their equivalent type under the changed Amateur LCD which came into effect shortly afterwards. Note also that the figures include clubs licences, beacons, and repeaters.
The WIA recently published a breakdown of licences at 1 April 2007.
On the WIA's published figures, the number of Advanced equivalent licences have declined at a rate of 1.33% pa from 04/10/05 to 01/04/07. This includes club licences which are usually pretty stable, so the number of individually held Advanced licenses is likely to have fallen by even more than 1.33% pa. It is interesting to note that in that category are the then Limited and Intermediate licencees who obtained increased band access with the recent licence reforms.
So whilst we have gained 1186 Foundation licences and 85 Standard licences, we have lost 235 Advanced licences.
Figure 2 expands the licence statistics for the last two observations, and it shows the 4.08%pa increase in overall numbers, and the 2.36%pa decrease in Advanced Licences.
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The information on Australia's main amateur radio training site Radio & Electronics School suggests that students should expect to be able to complete the Advanced course in about 66 hours in addition to the regulations and practical components which suggests about 80 hours of training activity in total for the Advanced licence. By contrast, the training investment in the Foundation licence is more like 6 hours.
When the increases and decreases are weighted by the relevant skill level or training investment, we have taken a step backwards.
That should be a concern to all amateurs, and to the WIA.
But apparently the WIA sees this as an unqualified success. A story Australia reverses amateur radio's downward trend - Amateur Numbers continue to grow on Southgate ARC and attributed to the WIA calls this out as a success "For those who have not yet heard, the great news is out. We have finally reversed the trend of our declining amateur population and we are now in positive growth mode!! ".
Notes:
Data prior to 2001 was from IARU statistics published on their website. Data from 2001 to 2004 is from the ACA Annual Report 2004, Oct 2005, Aug 2006 data is from the WIA website, April 2007 data is from the WIA AGM reports.
Owen Duffy 17 August 2007