It recently came time to think about renewing my license (same call for 46
years) and I started looking to find the proper form. The ham sites on the
Internet seem to have several outfits advertising to renew your license for
a fee, and I have got a few mailings of similar offers. The ARRL site seems
to push VEC use for renewals (at a fee I suppose) but, in all fairness to
the ARRL, I didn't spend that much time looking on their site for renewal
information. I did find, today, their page at
http://www.arrl.org/arrlvec/#renewals which is somewhat to the point.

The point is, renewals can be done by the licensee quickly and easily, and
FREE, directly with the FCC. (See the FCC link in the ARRL link above). I
did this less than a week ago (it took only a couple of minutes) and my
renewed license arrived today in the mail. I used the ID and password they
sent me a couple of years ago, which you will need.

I know a lot of you already know this, but thought I'd pass my experience
along to some others. The bottom line is, it's quick and free to do it
yourself if you know what
you are doing. If you don't, then pay someone $6 -$10 to do it for you.

Hope this info. helps someone out. -Bob