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Hash: SHA1 In .com "AF6AY" writes: On Apr 2, 10:21�am, Paul W. Schleck " wrote: -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 In . com "AF6AY" writes: *[...] * Curiously, there has been a growth of Club licenses * granted in the last year. *I would have thought that Club * licenses were relatively static since the overall licensee * totals showed little growth or decline in numbers? * 73, Len *AF6AY I agree that this is a very non-intuitive result at first glance. *One reasonable explanation would appear to be that there was a lot of pent-up demand for club licenses from over the relatively long period of time during which they were not issued, which was from at least 1978 to 1995. *The official FCC answer on the subject of club and special (i.e., "Vanity") callsigns during that time was that it was too much of an administrative burden to grant them. *The FCC was also using a relatively inflexible, legacy Honeywell system to track and issue amateur radio licenses. *Those that held licenses during that time, licenses that were impact-printed on smudgy carbon "burst" forms, might note that they were only issued one day a week (Thursday, I believe). Existing club licenses could be renewed, but if they expired and passed out of their grace period without renewal, they could not be reissued. I understand that the grandfathered club licenses were tracked by the FCC manually in an index card catalog. The period between 1995 and 2007 is twelve years. That's true. So, it's probably not the only explanation, especially if annual growth of club licenses has been increasing recently. In my opinion, other plausible explanations based on more recent trends could include: - More amateurs being aware of the opportunity to establish club stations (I know there's been recent debate in many forums regarding how long it takes word of FCC action to trickle down into the general amateur radio population and become common knowledge. It's probably not twelve years, but it might not be 30 days, either.) - Fewer bureaucratic hurdles to obtaining amateur radio licenses in general, due to a debugged Universal Licensing System, VEC handling of club licensing applications, and clearer documentation by the FCC, the ARRL, and other entities regarding how to apply for and renew licenses - An aging amateur radio population that desires to establish more legacies for callsigns held either by clubs or notable individuals - A fear that another embargo of similar or greater length might happen in the foreseeable future - A desire to establish club stations for Elmering/recruiting purposes, or to give amateurs of modest means or those under antenna restrictions access to more capable stations at all bands including HF, especially in light of licensing requirement changes - Or even just clearer and more permissive feedback from the FCC concerning clubs obtaining 1 or more callsigns, both by statement, and by enforcement action, or lack thereof (see link below) In that interim there have been a number of abuses of the Vanity callsign system, most notably by Roy Tucker of southern California who once had the Tucker family holding 41 callsigns, all at the same street-city address. That is now down to a mere twenty or so. :-) In addition to flexing some welcome enforcement muscle against obvious abusers like the Tuckers, the FCC was also kind enough to make a clarification of policy about 8 years ago: http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter/99/0709/#hollingsworth so club license applicants may no longer feel that they would be making themselves the "guinea pig" or "test case." - -- 73, Paul W. Schleck, K3FU http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/ Finger for PGP Public Key -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (SunOS) iD8DBQFGEpO76Pj0az779o4RAqIfAKCNQ7IAXjzwK1/MzpXD5khtPlYTOACfU+i3 9hGEBlhBUGdWxSJvSxGJMBA= =fSCn -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- |
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