In January 2025, we launched our UK Amateur Radio Survey for 2025. We believe this to the be the largest survey of the UK community this year, and the results are out. We had a total of 855 responses.
Results Summary Video
We’ve released a short video covering the key findings of the survey, including an extract of us asking the key survey question at the RSGB’s 2025 AGM:
What are today’ amateur’s most common activities? Top 5:
- HF Operation
- VHF / UHF Operation
- Operating Portable
- Socialising / friendship
- Data Modes
How did respondents get into the hobby? Top 5:
- Always been interested in radio
- As a result of an interest in CB
- Shortwave Listener (SWL)
- Looking for a hobby
- I’m from an electronics background
What do today’s newcomers struggle with? Top 5:
- Nerves about operating
- Setting up an antenna
- Finding the money for equipment
- Working out which aspect of the hobby is best to start on first
- Choosing a transceiver
How do respondents rate key organisations?
| 5 (Highest) | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 (Lowest) | |
| Essex Ham | 62.9% | 22.2% | 8.5% | 2.6% | 3.7% |
| Other online groups | 25.7% | 36.6% | 28.8% | 6.6% | 2.3% |
| Local bricks-and-mortar club | 28.5% | 18.9% | 17.2% | 12.8% | 22.6% |
| RSGB in general | 19.3% | 29.7% | 27.3% | 9.9% | 13.9% |
| RSGB exams | 24.4% | 27.4% | 22.7% | 10.3% | 15.2% |
| Ofcom (amateur radio only) | 22.9% | 32.6% | 31.4% | 7.8% | 5.3% |
Download Survey Results
Download the full results as a PDF: Essex Ham Survey 2025 Results (PDF)
Got a comment on the survey results?
Add a comment below!
There’s an image problem in UK amateur radio. It’s not the young, lively hobby we see from the american youtubers, the UK is bogged down with old farts, particularly at the rsgb, who seem so stuck in the past that they think the hobby is still all about components, soldering projects, and deep electronics theory (not even just a general understanding of what components are and what they do. Oh no, it has to be properly assessed with calculations and circuits that the average ham will never need to know. When was the last time a ham sat down with a pencil and calculated a circuit – practically never. Even for projects, most of us are looking to follow a tutorial or a kit nowadays.
Imagine wanting to get into a photography club, but before you can get along and use your camera, you have to take 3 increasingly difficult exams on old historic technology before you’re welcome and can start to use your new equipment. The exams the are tired and outdated and irrelevant. They’re putting people off the hobby and actually stopping it from growing to any potential, because they want to keep people down and only allow the full licences to a chosen few.
They won’t even change. Where’s the modular exam system? where’s the release of the questions and answer database they hinted at? They don’t support people, they’re just happy to say rubbish like ” we’ve got an 80% pass rate” – what? So 20% of people walk away? and that’s ok? There should be a target of 100% – anyone that wants to get fully licensed should be able to, not just the few. Why set exams that are so difficult that they’re happy to see people fail. The exams belong in a dated era, before the internet, before YouTube, when you had to go to a college of a library for your knowledge. Nowadays we can just look things up, instantly on our phones. We shouldn’t need to memorize and prove so much before being awarded a licence.
There’s really poor support for the UK intermediate and full exams. Why? Because the average ham probably doesn’t know all the theory themselves. Making YouTube content for the full licences is too much hard work, nobody’s doing it.
Please help all those frustrated hams. No courses, no online tuition, no club support. What about us normal people, busy with kids and work, looking for a casual hobby, who aren’t physics geniuses, adjust want to operate in the hobby and enjoy it?
The UK rsgb should focus less on all the world war 2 history and codebreakers nonsense, and actually modernise with where the hobby is today, not where it was 50 years ago. And if they can’t provide decent resources, or get clubs to deliver the training, maybe it’s time they admit that the exams are bloated and outdated. Instead all we get is denial off them. For some reason they’re always on the defensive, they should be on our side. Our advocates. Delivering tuition and support, instead of looking like gatekeepers who are constantly against us
They don’t like criticism at RSGH HQ. They think the exams are perfect and look down on people who can’t achieve them. They’re not bothered if people walk away, and do nothing to support or retain the good ones.
You can literally have dozens of new fresh M7’s pass, they play with a few repeaters for a couple of months, then after a year you never hear or see off them again. There’s zero interest in continuing their development and clubs have no support from the RSGB in how to deliver this mammoth training of the full callsign.
The figures for M7 passes are totally biased – in my experience they’re made up of scout groups and other interest groups. In 2020, levels peaked at nearly 3000 new foundation licences issued. Where are they all now? By 2023, we see less than 200 full licences issued for the year. Of all the 15,000 licences issued between 2018 and 2023, only about 10% of those were Full. They really need to do something if 90% of people walk away from the hobby – we see it in the clubs anecdotally, and the numbers don’t lie either.
There’s over 400 clubs in the UK, we’re barely even qualifying one full licencee for every 2 clubs, and I imagine there are popular clubs training several candidates and most clubs gaining none that skew this too. When people go on about ‘back in my day’, they should reflect on the fact that we were registering nearly 8,000 full licences each year in the early 1980’s. Now, it’s about 200?
They don’t need a crystal ball to see that the numbers don’t add up to a sustainable hobby.
Give the average age of club members seems to be 60’s+, there isn’t much future proofing being thought out at the RSGB.
Instead of having the licences termed “Foundation”, “Intermediate”, and “Full”, they should be renamed “Class 1”, “Class 2”, “Class 3”.
This would remove the negative connotations of Foundation being somehow a junior/rookie license if people are happy to stay there. Intermediate has the connotations of being a transitional/not-quite-made-it-yet status. People can happily sit at their appropriate level without being dumbed down.
Also, get all classes of licence certified for use overseas so we can all take our kit on holiday and enjoy it.
Even their name is a dated relic – RSGB – it should be RSUK to reflect the inclusion of Wales and Scotland.
I vote Pete for RSGB president. He seems to ‘get it’. Why make this hobby so hard that so many people just fall away instead of growing in it.
We’ll be left with just fewer and fewer technical nerds that are able to pass the full exam, that the airwaves from the UK will be dead in a decade or two – and nothing is being done about this.
There seems to be such a huge technical learning curve between foundation and full, that people just drop off and feel unwelcome when they see the struggle to progress. Why does all that learning and extensive knowledge have to be examined to the Nth degree to progress – the joy of ham radio is all the learning along the way, for years and years after, of self training and learning.
It’s simply too hard for most ordinary people to get the golden ticket, and people aren’t able to achieve this in a reasonable time scale and give up. I’ve seen this time and time again.
We will inevitably see a decline in then number of specialist ham radio shops in the UK too as the old G’s go silent, because not enough foundation amateurs have need for any of the high power equipment because of their license conditions.
Cheap Chinese pricing (think g90) must have already dented sales. And I suspect the RSGB, in making exams so difficult, also means people don’t see the point in spending out on the higher power equipment.
I would suspect that most people just want to be operators these days. The days of construction are gone. The sooner the RSGB realise this the better. More people would be retained in the hobby, and it would be better for everyone (clubs, shops, and increased activity alike), if the exams were more achievable in a reasonable time scale.
Once the specialist shops close they’ll never come back. We’ll just be left with online storefronts for the Chinese outlets. Clubs will be a thing of the past too unless the RSGB see the error of their ways and kindle some enthusiasm back into newly licenced hams to retain them.
Even if critics say ‘ohh people want it easy these days’, or ‘back in my day it was harder’, well, if that’s the reality, then that’s the challenge. That’s the way the hobby has changed. If making it easier really is the only solution to deal with people’s busy modern lives, then so be it. What’s the alternative? A dying hobby? Dead airwaves? Clubs with no members left? The hobby left with just a few oddly satisfied sad hams sat in an empty room saying ‘well, at least we kept it difficult for newcomers’.