The AM Forum

Some of those who want to keep the current U.S. sub-band and sub-sub-band restrictions on 40m in place, try to justify it on the basis that international users need to be kept "safe" from the stampedes of the US DX'ers, and because limited 40m phone privileges (for US lower 48 users) have "always" existed.

Back in the 50's and 60's, US amateurs outnumbered the rest of the world combined.  But that is no longer true.  Take Europe for example.  The combined amateur radio population of Germany, England, Spain, Russia, Italy and France alone add up to 320,530.  Add in Canada, and the total comes to 365,530. This compares to 674,652 in USA.  Japan has 1,350,127 amateurs. There are nearly 3 million ham radio operators around the world.  So to-day, the U.S. is just one country amongst many throughout the world in terms of amateur radio population.  The rest of the world no longer needs "protection" from the "stampedes" of U.S. amateur radio operators.

Ham populations of some of the countries of the world (http://www.qsl.net/vu2msy/HAMPOP.htm)

IARU Data: top 100 countries by ham radio population (http://www.n0hr.com/ham_radio_population.htm)

well only 324056 are general and above, so its actually  fairly small number of HF hams in the US.
and how many of those 324056 are inactive or dead?
i wonder what the stats are on japans 1.35 million hams, are they mostly VHF/UHF users?

So we're outsourcing. What else is new?

I don't see any reason to care about these numbers. At all.

When we start worrying about "head count", we start encouraging all kinds of people with no care, interest, or talent in radio to get licenses. Then we start complaining about the "dumbing down" of the hobby. Then the dummies get bored and let their licenses lapse. Then we start worrying about "head count" again.

Quality, not quantity. I don't care if there's only five of us left.

I agree with that, but you missed my point entirely.

The point is, how many active U.S. hams are using bands like 40m phone, compared to the rest of the world?  Is there any reason why the proportion of VHF-only users, paper-only hams and presently-inactive hams, versus active HF phone operators, would be vastly different in the U.S. than elsewhere?  If anything, the percentage of total licensees listed in the FCC data base, who are currently active on HF, might be lower in the U.S. than elsewhere.

The people who are wanting to keep U.S. hams restricted to the back of the bus on 40m, by prohibiting phone below 7125 kHz despite the fact that very few U.S. hams are using 7075-7125 for CW and data, are still using the 1950's-60's era argument that there are so many U.S. hams on the air compared to the rest of the world, that the frequencies would be so swamped with Yank slopbucketeers, that foreign phone and data operators would move down lower and crowd out the CW operators, just to get away from the unwashed hoards of US phone stations. 

I am suggesting that those numbers statistics call into question the validity of that argument.