N2EY wrote:
"Dee D. Flint" writes:
Eliminating skill and/or knowledge requirements should always be approached
with caution and some degree of trepidation. We sometimes don't know what
we need until we no longer have the ability to use that skill and/or
knowledge. Even when projecting based on past experience, foresight is far
from 20/20.

It's also important to monitor the actual results of changes. For example, back
in April of 2000, code testing was reduced to a single 5 wpm test *and* the
written tests were reduced. Did we get lots more new hams? Nope - in 3-1/2
years, the ARS in the USA has grown by less than 10,000. What we did get was
lots of upgrades by already-licensed hams in the year or so following the rules
changes, then a slowdown to nearly the rates before the changes.

Boy, that's really misleading (though I assume unintentionally). You ask
a rhetorical question about "new hams", but then quote a number (10,000)
which is something else.

In the 41 months since restructuring, about 70,000 new hams have been
licensed. That's an average of 1670 new hams per month. About 10% of
current ARS licensees obtained their license since the April 2000
restructuring.

For comparison, in the 34 months prior to restructuring about 48,000 new
hams were licensed in the ARS. That's an average of about 1410 new hams
per month.

It seems, then, that the rate at which new hams entered the ARS increased
by about 20% after restructuring, and that this increase was sustained for
at least 39 of those 41 months (the last couple of months are suspicious).
Is a 20% increase in the number of new hams due to restructuring not "a lot",
and if not then how much would it have had to increase to be "a lot" in
your view?

Dennis Ferguson