To survive, and thrive, in Canada, Radio Amateurs are going to have to look seriously at how we grow the hobby.

The first thing we are going to have to muddle thru is "where are we?" - and that means we need to benchmark our numbers against other organizations such as the ARRL and the RSGB.

Folks get uptight when we compare RAC to the ARRL, mostly because it's intimidating to compare Canada to our mighty friend to the south. But you have to start somewhere!

US Population: 317,297,938, 700,000 licenced Amateurs. 161,000 ARRL members

The ARRL numbers translate to about 2,430 Amateurs per million population and 507 members per million population. You could also argue that ARRL has 23% market share.

So, for a Canadian population of 35,295,770, we should expect about 85.700 licenced Amateurs and 18,000 RAC Members.

Not surprisingly, this is not true - in actuality we have (at best, refined guess, eliminating duplicate calls and a swag at silent keys) about 40,000 Licenced hams in Canada (Feel free to send me your math - I'm very interested). We have about 4,326 full members including life, electronic etc, so thats about 11% marketshare.

Clearly we have two big jobs here:

1) Grow the Pie (Make more Amateurs= EDUCATION))

2) Gain their confidence and stimulate their desire to become part of the National Organization (RAC Value Proposition)

Bottom line, we have some work to do and it needs to have a scorecard. This may be a good start

I am ALWAYS interested in your thoughts on this

73,

Rod