On Mar 4, 12:49 pm, "Dee Flint" wrote:

Already the flurry of applicants has dropped and attendance
is close to that of pre-Feb 23 levels.

This is not surprising. Amateur radio has already had a "code-free"
license for 15 years. The claims that there was this huge untapped
reservoir of new licensees just waiting for a "code-free HF" license
was never supported by any facts -- just supposition and anecdotal
claims of "deaf PhD EE friends". Why anyone would even think there
would be this huge wave of new applicants is beyond me.


On Mar 4, 7:24 pm, Mike Coslo wrote:

That isn't too surprising. The first several months are likely to
be upgrades from people who paid attention to the change in testing.

Frankly, I suspect that 99.9% of the activity generated from this
latest licensing change will be nothing but upgrades.

As I posted on another thread, I predict at the end of the year we
will see a 0 to -1% "growth" in ham radio resulting from these
changes.


I suspect the next batch will be Hams that found out about the
change right around now. This group will be upgrading about 6 - 12 months
from the change.

Given the current state of the theory examinations, I suspect you'll
see an upgrade curve which is steep at first, tapers off, and then
falls rapidly as well, as the pool of people who are interested in
upgrading is exhausted.

Frankly, not everyone is interested in upgrading. My family has
Advanced, General, and Tech-class licensees. None of them have any
intention of upgrading, the last I knew.


Absolutely new people won't be testing until around a year from
now.

I'm not quite sure how you formulate this claim. It certainly doesn't
take a year to study to pass an amateur radio examination. People
finding out about the licensing changes now could have a license in-
hand virtually immediately. Certainly within 60 to 90 days.

We've already had a codeless license for 15 years. All we have now are
codeless HF licenses as well. Is there going to be this huge influx of
people who never got licensed as Techs because they couldn't operate
HF? I seriously doubt it.

I'm sure there will be some, but the number will be statistically
insignificant.


73
kh6hz