"Bill Sohl" wrote

I would personally oppose any such move and, I believe, I
am familiar enough with the other NCI directors to safely
say that none of them want relaxation of test requirements
for written.


Bill,

Just to make sure I had not mis-characterized the NCI position, I checked their
comments to RM-10867, on file at FCC's web site. My recollection was accurate,
in that it expressed unconditional support of the proposal for free upgrades.

In my veiw such granting of instant upgrades from Technician to General for
almost a third-of-a-million licensees would make a mockery of the written
examinations..

Today the General exam requires passing two 35-question written examinations,
and the Technician requires passing only the simpler of those two exams.

The ARRL petition would essentially grant a one-time waiver of the second
(harder) of the examinations, in effect holding a one-day sale of "half-price"
General licenses to these 330,000 licensees. This is not some trivial "one-time
adjustment" --- in fact if it were adopted, the vast majority of the General
licensees would never have successfully passed the test required for that
license class!

In the world of "unintended consequence" the effect of this give-away would be
that the commission would have ipso-facto established that today's Technician
examination is perfectly adequate for a General class license, and the
credibility of the qualification structure in the Amateur Radio Service would be
destroyed (especially since these "new" Generals would presumably now receive
credit for the "General" written element when they proceed to upgrade to Extra).

73, de Hans, K0HB