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February 17th 05, 07:02 PM

wrote in news:1108637750.922635.205620
@l41g2000cwc.googlegroups.com:

Alun L. Palmer wrote:
"Alun L. Palmer" wrote in
:

wrote in news:1108578593.250795.201100
@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

Alun L. Palmer wrote:
Yes, South Africa has abolished the code test! One more domino has
fallen.

How many countries does that make now, compared to those who still
have it?

73 de Jim, N2EY

It's getting a little difficult to keep track. However, I
think at
least the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Belgium, the
Netherlands,
Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Singapore,
Australia,
New Zealand, Papua Niugini, Hong Kong and South Africa have
abolished the code test so far. I think that of these only Austria
and the Netherlands even retain an entry level licence that doesn't
give HF privileges.

That's only 17 countries, but I expect I may have missed some
out. I make the combined ham population of the above something over
260,000 (possibly more than half of them no-coders), so probably
a little less
than half the number of hams in the US.

260,000/670,000 = about 38.9%

However, there are well over
50,000 hams in Canada, which is also likely to abolish the code test
very soon.

Yep. But there are two big points about Canada:

1) The proposal would increase the written test level

2) Commentary to the Canadian proposal showed a clear majority
favored the change. That's not the case in the USA, in any survey done
to date, nor in the commentary to FCC.

Don't forget that Japan, with a ham population of 1.2 Million (twice
that of the US, out of maybe a fifth of your general
population), has
long had a no-code HF licence, albeit limited to 10 Watts.

Check your numbers!

Japan has over 3.1 million operator licenses - but they cost nothing
and never expire, so that number is really the number of ham operator
licenses issued since 1955, not the number of present-day hams.

Japanese *station* licenses are a bit over 600,000 now, and have been
dropping for a decade.

The number of new JA licenses has also been dropping.

See the AH0A website.

I'm not sure
how many Japanese hams have a no-code HF licence,

Well over 95%.

but they may even
rival all the new ones so far put together, although the new
guys can use more than 10 Watts! It's probably only a matter of time
before Japan lets all of their hams use HF anyway.

All Japanese hams have HF privileges *today*. Been that way for
decades.

But for all classes of ham license except 4th class, JA hams have a
code test. And there's no move to change that yet.

Even without the low power Japanese stations, the number of
no-coders who have full HF privileges right now is probably about
the same as the
number of no-code Techs in the US.

Close enough.

And if there are already that number of no-code hams on HF without any
incident, what is the problem with abolishing the code test here?

That's 18, I didn't count both Austria and Australia!

OK. But it's still a small fraction of the number of hams
and the number of countries.

The big questions: Must all countries drop the code test
because a few have decided to? Or can each country decide for
itself.

Each country can do as it chooses, but the trend is to abolish the code
test.

Has the change caused lots of new growth in countries that have
dropped code testing?

73 de Jim, N2EY

No, but it's increased HF activity in those countries