Back in the days before face book and SMS text messaging, most youngsters would do their social networking using the humble telephone (heaven forbid we'd actually get off our teenage rear ends and travel a few blocks for a face-to-face conversation).  That's when AM CB radio became popular and we were all suddenly off ten-four-good-buddying each other far from the ears of our eavesdropping parents.  The irony was of course that by using radio to communicate, instead of just our families listening in, now the whole world could. Well that never bothered us and public hookups, breakups and makeups were normal everyday occurrences.  We spent hours and hours talking (mostly about nothing) and I recall having many an extended conversation over the air - with the person I was talking to seated in the car parked alongside mine!  Actually not much has changed; recently I watched my daughter and her friend texting each other from adjacent seats on the train. 

At least CB did not cost MY parents 25c a call.

I was one of those hard-core CB users that ultimately got SIDEBAND.

Single Sideband (SSB) radio was a whole lot of fun.  You suddenly had privacy from the lower echelon (who did not have SSB) and you were able to transmit a little further than before.  Plus there was something cool about having to clarify the incoming signal that really struck a chord with tech-heads like me.  But one of the coolest things about SSB (for me anyway) was that I could now have extended conversations with people on the other side of the planet!

Most radio-heads will be aware that HF transmissions can be reflected by the ionosphere.  If the conditions are right, a transmitted signal can zigzag (be reflected back and forth) between the ionosphere and the earth and end up traveling hundreds or even thousands of kilometers.  DX'ing (communication over distance using skips) on our CB radios was not legal at that time so those of us who wished to pursue this pastime invariably looked toward amateur radio.

But tell a teenager that he/she needed to study for exams, and WORST OF ALL spend the first year of their Amateur license restricted to Morse code, and the result is predictable: "Sound's great - I'll look into it seriously as soon as I've finished tidying my room"

So thirty years later I still do not have an amateur license (my room has never been tidy?).

.....and yet I'm still considering getting my Amateur license.  The difference is that now I have an old Amateur Band transceiver that I'm fixing up and what's more it is no longer necessary to spend the first year doing Morse code.  So what's holding me back?

One has to wonder what the future holds for Amateur radio. Amateur Radio (also known as Ham radio) has been around for over a hundred years, but now the question is how will it compete with newer technologies such as smart phones and the internet?  Let's face it I can be Skyping all around the world on my mobile phone with very little technical expertise and hardly any capital outlay.  I know that radio hams are doing far more with technology now than they ever were thirty years ago, but that technology comes with a price tag.  Yes I can install a 100 Watt transceiver and a thirty foot antenna and if I know what I am doing I might establish a dialog with a similarly minded person in Scandinavia (or wherever), but if I really wanted to communicate with a Scandinavian radio enthusiast I don't need a radio anymore, I can simply Google for the name of a "radio enthusiast" internet discussion forum, log on, find an interesting thread and throw my 50 ohms in.

CQ or not CQ that is the question.  Just like Sideband CB, Amateur radio will eliminate all but the most committed communicators (which could be argued is not necessarily a good thing).  If you follow the reports you might know that the US Federal Commission has issued a statement that Ham radio licenses are at an all time high, with over 700,000 licenses currently being held in the United States.  This statement was made of course to try and entice new enthusiasts in the promise that "hey everybody else is doing it, why not give it a go yourself....”  But here is the reality: In the USA, an Amateur radio license is valid for 10 years, and renewing it is easy and the cost negligible.  So unless you are dead (it happens) you figure that it is easier to renew than to let the license lapse and have to jump through all the hoops again in order to re-apply from scratch. 

One blogger writes "My father has been a ham since the 1960s, but hasn't touched a radio in three decades".

I don't think it is all gloom and doom though, the US Federal Commission also tells us that of those 700,314 current licenses, 40,000 are new licenses applied for in the last five years.  Let us hope that those new license holders are from a broad spectrum of the population and not predominately old farts like me, jumping on the nostalgia bandwagon.  So maybe there is life left in Ham radio yet; I'd like to hope that in another hundred years I will still be waffling on about maybe getting my Amateur Radio license.....

FYI In Australia, Amateur Radio Enthusiasts (Hams) are represented by the Wireless Institute of Australia. The Wireless Institute of Australia is today a member of the International Amateur Radio Union. Check out their website at http://www.wia.org.au/ for more information.