We heard about this from a friend. Imindoors was into radio ham.

What if you don't have internet? Can it be renewed by post/phone?

88's (I'm told by imindoors)

Can you explain how this would help to kill the hobby?  Seems like a sensible measure o me. Quite rare from this government. Have there not also been steps taken in recent years to encourage membership by making the entry requirements easier, by reducing the morse content for instance?

 The hobby is surely in decline anyway, due to young people being more interesred in computing etc, and long distance communication is regarded as routine now rather than exciting.

 It occurs also that there will be one less job for your heirs to do when you go "silent key" as they insist on  calling  dying. Licence will be automatically revoked at the next five year point.

best 73's (as they say)

I was wondering the same Mel, not everyone has Internet. There is an option to renew by post but not by telephone, the main concern is the 5 year requirement to validate or loose.

Validating via the internet requires me to register my details on the Ofcom website, choose a password and a challenge question and answer.. Ofcom will then send me a username via post! At this point I can log onto the site and validate my licence.

All fine and dandy if you are IT aware and have access to the web, some older Radio Amateurs have abolutley no interest in computers, so there is a definate stumbling block there. Reminders will not be sent out so the onus is totally on the licence holder to renew "in a timely manner" or loose their licence.

Must make a mental note for February 2012 !

With regard to trips's comments:

"The hobby is surely in decline anyway, due to young people being more interesred in computing etc, and long distance communication is regarded as routine now rather than exciting. "

The UK Amateur Radio Licence is granted for "the self training of the licensee in radio communications including technical investigations"

The hobby is not just about "long distance communication" , many amateurs have helped push  the boundaries of the frequency spectrums that we use and  take for granted today.

 Some use the hobby for bouncing signals off the moon or communicating via the ionised trails of meteors entering the earths atmophere. Radio Amateurs poineered packet switched communication, the same techniques are now used in network communication and email.

Anyone can use their mobile to talk to any other mobile phone user anywhere in the world, what's the fun in that.  Global communications are not new, I think you could do that back in the 1930's to the extent of the wired network.

Try communicating over a distance of 2000 miles, bouncing your signal off an auroral curtain using 1 watt of power, thats exciting and quite good fun, you tend to learn one or two things as well.

Oh and by the way, we never say "best 73's"

73's is sufficient.

G4LWG  dah dit dah, thats a "K" in morse - invitation to transmit  

A radio ham friend of imindoors says "why ? it's only to save the gov money and in time to take the frequences back and sell them."

Then I sent him your original post Pan and his reply to that was....

"yes he's right in 5 years time i will foget to renew like a lot of people and then they will say they can make better use of the frequence's"

And don't forget the TV licence!!  Imindoors hasn't kept up his licence for quite some time. 

I've resurrected an old thread (16 things it took me....), we (Nandy Gigglepants & I) had a morse conversation a while ago about am radio.

I've just read the thread Mel, excellent stuff.

I did took my morse test at "The Ships Radio Inspectors Office" at Princess Dock, Hull. I can still remember the passage I had to send, but not the random number groups. Is this a sign of getting old? 

Like "imindoors" I am no longer active but I do still have some gear and may well get back to some form of weird communication in the future, providing I remember to renew.

I'm tweaking some photo's of my Dad during the war to put up on the site at the moment.

Hey ho, aint communication technology wonderfull

I can remember going swimming with imindoors when I was about 17 (10 years before we were an item) and listening to him talking to someone on the way home. I think that was my first experience of it. Although I can remember my maths teacher telling us she was a radio ham before I witnessed imindoors' geeky moment. His Dad was also into it and had a setup in the living room next to his chair. 

He says he might get back into it when we are more permanently in France but then he says he's going to do a lot of things when we qare in France.

Well that's me told isn't it.  Still not sure why people who are capable of doing propagation experiments with meteor scatter etc can't renew their licence over the net.  The future and security of your frequencies would seem to lie in your own hands. I think it is secure.

Time for me to go qrt I think.          de tripps