By Rich Moseson, W2VU
Editor, CQ

I was tuning around on 20 meters the other day when I stopped to listen in on a contact in progress. There appeared to be three or four hams in the QSO, and they seemed to be talking about what a lot of us talk about -- new rigs on the horizon and various people's on-air activity levels. One of the hams, whom I later determined to be KK7TV, caught my attention with a comment that "I think we all have our personal sunspot cycles."

What a concept! What a perfect analogy to the way many of us live our ham radio lives!

I contacted Randy Starace, KK7TV, and asked exactly what the "personal sunspot cycle" meant to him. Randy responded:

Yes, I do go through spells of not being active on the radio. But it's not like my antenna is down or the rig is broken, these circumstances would cause yours truly to triple his efforts to get back on the air. No! It's knowing that the ham shack is functioning 100%, but my ability to make a contact is buried somewhere between another hobby or the endless list of "to do's." I walk by my shack and look in -- yes, all my stuff is still there -- but then I keep on walking to another part of the house without the slightest urge to turn on the rig. This will go on for days or even weeks. My lovely wife gets a puzzled look on her face and asks if I am okay. I say yes, I feel fine. She replies, "I haven't heard that noise coming from your shack in quite a while." I think for a second and reply, "I must be going through my sunspot cycle."

Randy's response is particularly interesting to me because his interpretation of his comment is a little different from mine. Randy sees the "cycle" as short-term, with daily or weekly variations in available time or interest for operating. I see it more broadly -- the sunspot cycle, after all, is 11 years long, and some even theorize that it's really a 22-year cycle.

There are those of us -- Randy, no doubt; myself, and many of you -- for whom some level of amateur activity is a constant over the course of decades. I've been licensed over 30 years and while there have been periods when other demands on my time took precedence over ham radio, I can't think of any full year in which I've been totally off the air. My operation may have been limited to getting on 2-meter FM while traveling, but there's always been something.

On the other hand, there are many people who, for whatever reason, have temporarily become completely inactive. I say temporarily because they don't seem to be letting their licenses lapse. In fact, they seem to be renewing their licenses in near-record numbers, and these renewals are sustaining the ongoing growth of amateur licensing totals. This is a reversal of a trend of a couple of years ago, when renewal rates appeared to be down. This is good, since the numbers of new hams is holding fairly steady in the neighborhood of 21,000 per year*. But total renewals jumped from 23,400 in 2000 to 42,700 in the year ending this past May 31, an increase in renewals of some 83%! Perhaps this is just a reflection of the larger number of new licenses issued in 1992 and 93, after the code requirement for the Technician Class was dropped, than in 1990, but even so, it means that large numbers of those early "code-free Techs" are renewing their licenses. This is good.

However... as of May 31, 47% of all licensed hams in the U.S. were Technicians, and as most anyone who makes a habit of monitoring the VHF bands will tell you, you won't find 47% of amateur activity on VHF. And anyone who makes a habit of monitoring the HF bands will tell you that nowhere near the approximately 400,000 U.S. hams licensed to operate there actually are. The simple fact is that a large number - probably a majority - of our 687,000 licensed hams are inactive. This is bad. Or is it?

Have these people lost all interest in amateur radio? Or are they simply at low points in their personal sunspot cycles, with plans to get back on the air as soon as they get time ... even if that takes several years, just like the real sunspot cycle? An ongoing reserve of future activity for which the hardest part - licensing - has already been done?

I vote for the personal sunspot cycle theory. Certainly, there are some licensees who have lost interest and who will drop off the licensing rolls two years after their licenses expire. In the year ending May 31, over 25,000 hams let their licenses lapse. But over 40,000 hams renewed their tickets in the same period.

Some estimates of amateur activity levels are that only one in six licensees is active at any given time, which would give us just under 115,000 active hams in the U.S. Given an even distribution across a 10-year license term, that means that on average, 11,500 of these active hams would need to renew their licenses in a given 12-month period. But there were 40,000 total renewals between June 1, 2002 and May 31, 2003, meaning that some 28,500 "inactive" hams also renewed. Why bother if you're not planning to someday become active again?

Another factor in favor of the personal sunspot cycle theory: I am constantly meeting or hearing from people who have been inactive for years and now want to get back on the air. Some of them have maintained their licenses, others have let them lapse. But in all cases, there had been a peak of personal interest some years ago, then life got in the way and their interest waned, and now it's rising again, just like the sunspot cycle. They're coming back, and we all should welcome them with open arms just as we welcome the return of the sunspots. As for those who are currently inactive, I have faith that someday, they'll be back.

On-Air Excitement

The real sunspot cycle, of course, is in decline. Conditions on HF this spring were pretty bad, and we're going to have to go through some very low spots before the spots start coming back in three-to-four years. But that doesn't mean it's time to dive into your own sunspot minimum. We've got a new band, such as it is, to experiment with at 5 MHz, also known as 60 meters. The five discrete frequencies were opened to amateur use on July 3rd. Now some of you may scoff at a ham band of five channels, with power limited to 50 watts ERP (effective radiated power), and operation limited to upper sideband. Some of you may agree with the CQ reader who wrote that the new band was an "insult" to amateurs and that he would never operate there. On the other hand, I'm sure there are many of you who look forward to the opportunity to discover who and where you can work on 5 MHz and to the challenge of sharing a DX-capable HF band with not only other hams but also government users such as the Coast Guard and the Justice Department. Contributing Editor Gordon West, WB6NOA, provides an excellent guide to getting started on 60 meters. I highly recommend that anyone anticipating operating on this band read this article, to learn such things as where to tune your VFO to be "spot on" the correct frequencies (it's NOT the frequencies listed in the FCC's Report and Order), or how to determine your ERP if you're using something other than a dipole antenna.

There's more exciting news up on VHF, specifically on 222 MHz. It's long been thought that sporadic-E propagation should be able to reach 222 and make long-distance communication possible here, but until now, only one or two instances of E-skip contacts on the band have been reported. Well, this spring has had some tremendous Es openings on 6 and 2 meters, and in mid-June, at least one of those big-time openings reached all the way up to 222 and the band stayed open for nearly two hours, with contacts made between Arizona and Washington State. At the same time, two meters and six meters were also wide open, with a lot of Caribbean and African DX on six. Read N6CL's "VHF-Plus" column this month (which he's been updating right up to deadline) for all the details.

Welcome to RTTY Journal and W5YI Report Readers

We would like to extend a warm welcome to CQ to readers of The New RTTY Journal and the W5YI Report, both of which have ceased publication. Their respective publishers have arranged to have their readers' remaining subscriptions fulfilled by CQ, based on the value of the remaining portion of each subscription. If you are already a CQ subscriber, your subscription will be extended by the appropriate number of issues. If you start getting two (or three!) issues of CQ each month, gather them all up, call our customer service number at 800-853-9797 and we'll get it all straightened out.

Amateur radio is the poorer for the loss of these publications. The New RTTY Journal and its predecessors have been part of the amateur radio landscape for more than 50 years. Fred Maia, W5YI, spent a quarter-century bringing hams the latest news of amateur radio and the broader electronics industry on his familiar pink bi-weekly newsletter. Fred will continue to write his monthly column in CQ and he explains his decision to shut down the W5YI Report in his column this month. In addition, we've received reports that the Australian magazine, Radio and Communications, has ceased publication and that a regional on-air news program in the Midwest, "Amateur News Weekly," has gone QRT.

Specialty magazines have never had an easy time in amateur radio simply because there are so many specialties. In addition to the general interest magazines and organizational journals, the U.S. market today supports one VHF magazine, one contesting magazine, one technical magazine and one amateur television magazine. People who are active in these parts of our hobby owe it to themselves and to the activities they enjoy to support these publications that help promote the things they like to do. The specialty magazines will not survive on their own. (Neither will the general-interest magazines, but we have a broader base on which to draw.)

Likewise, while independent on-air news services rely on volunteers to submit news stories, they still incur significant costs in production and distribution. Since they air on amateur frequencies, they may not carry advertising. So they must rely on direct financial support from the people who benefit from listening to their news reports.

The strength and vitality of our hobby lies not only in getting people licensed and on the air but in supporting the "infrastructure" that binds us together as a community. The ARRL, community-wide (general interest) magazines, specialty magazines and independent news sources are all essential ingredients in the long-term health of amateur radio. They all need your ongoing support.

73 de W2VU

* All licensing statistics from AH0A's website, <http://ah0a.org/FCC/index.html>.