The decline in the number of French radio amateurs continues, in 2018 the number of Amateur / Ham Radio Operators fell to just 13,126.

The French Entry-Level (F0) license, requiring just a short 20 question 15-minute rules/regs exam with a 98% pass rate, was scrapped in 2012 leaving only a single HAREC compatible license class. The French HAREC license requires passing a single 40 question 45-minute exam. 2018 saw a 62% pass rate for the HAREC with 150 people successfully passing the exam.

While the number of individual amateur licenses continues to declines the number of callsigns allocated to Clubs and Repeaters is rising. As the amateur population is declining this suggests there are more clubs with smaller memberships and VHF/UHF activity is spread out more thinly across more repeaters FM/C4FM/DMR/D-Star?

Passion Radio Report - https://tinyurl.com/France-AR-Statistics-2018