I know how the ARRL likes to cite that membership in the Amateur Radio community is up. But I know that the Amateur radio  in my community of southeast New England is dying very slowly.

Case in point, a radio club I’d belonged to 20 years ago.  It had over 50 members now it’s down to 17. Lots of the membership are silent keys (SK) now. So the clubs dues which were $50 annually went up to $150 annually.

A fellow amateur and I have been discussing what could be done. We realized that a bunch of us are Extra class and hold our volunteer examiner credentials. So we were saying the club should do some test sessions.

I went further said we should do classes – and the thing is you can charge for classes. All of us have gobs of experience in RF, InfoTech and InfoSec. In fact it struck me, back when DefCon 401 was active many of us had our licenses. So why not a blending of the two – I also mentioned in the classes we could do more than just teach to the tests, we could delve into the theory. And it hit me, since DefCon401 is pretty much defunct – maybe start that up again and do presentations at the clubhouse.

But alas, DC401 was mostly alumnus of Verisign/SecureWorks/Dell. Maybe time to get new blood in there.