Hi Colin, first, your ideas and thoughts as usual, are very well 
stated.  Maybe your sticky notes aren't sticky enough so they 
never got turned in.  Seriously though, when I was reading your 
thoughts, it occurred to me that, like ham radio, the animal 
groups have also been declining over time.  By Animal groups, I 
mean the Lions, Elks, Moose, and so-on are or seem to all be 
struggling to keep their numbers up.  Don't know about the rotary 
and siroptimists, but I think that many people, especially young 
ones, has been getting into the social media stuff and don't feel 
the same need for direct interaction like meetings etc.  Maybe 
this portends some major underlying social change because of 
technology, maybe even polarization, especially in the US.  I 
belong to two ham clubs here.  One, has a breakfast every fourth 
Saturday of the month which usually gets about 20 to 25 hams and 
their significant others, maybe some wannabees.  The other club 
has a Friday evening meeting that usually has a tech lecture most 
months  or auction a couple times a year.  I have not gone to 
that usuY for lack of a reade but I think it's fairly well 
attended.  I don't have a sense of the numbers in each club, but 
another local club seems to be cranking out new hams some of whom 
I have heard and talked too on VHF.  Wish I had the secret 
solution for you, and us in general.  I don't think free pizza 
and beer would even encourage folks for too long.
Speaking of HF, I got my ALS600 fired up and am not using any 
antenna tuner in line since I found out the Ldg AT600 Pro II auto 
tuner is just plain Not Blind friendly, even LDG wrote me about 
that.  Now I gotta return the thing to HRO hoping they will give 
me back most of the $338  I spent on it.  Hope we can talk on HF, 
bands permitting, one of these days.  I could barely hear Lloyd 
yesterday and called numerous times using the amp never to be 
heard.  Kind of disappointing but 20 meters was pretty bad.  Well 
enough for now, 73, Jim WA6EKS