In article , "Jim Hampton"
writes:

I found my old 2nd class commercial telegraph ticket.

I've still got my 1970 Extra document.

Would that support
the no medical waivers?

Bingo.

Of course, does that prove I could still do 20
words per minute (which is the question you have been asking; good question
indeed).

'zactly.

Gad, I've got but about two weeks and my license expires. Now to
go search the FCC website ...

You can renew online or do what I did: download the PDF for the Form 605, fill
it out and drop in the mail.

73 de Jim, N2EY

D. Stussy wrote:

On Sun, 31 Aug 2003, N2EY wrote:


In article ,
(Jason Hsu) writes:



I found this comment on eham.net:
"I hold the OLD ADVANCED license and it is a matter of prestidge. I
had to have 13 wpm to get to this level and now they want to do away
with ALL CW? Keep at least the 5 wpm.
It is too easy to pass a written exam. The code kept the CB crowd from
gaining acess to our bands. "


The fact of the matter is that simply having an Advanced is not proof of code
speed. Since 1990, medical waivers were available for 13 and 20 wpm.



Although true, the fact of a waiver is in the FCC's database (there's a field
for it). As an excuse not to upgrade to extra, it's probably one of the lamest
ideas around. Upon upgrade, one will still have the "prior class held" field
that will say advanced, so with the combination of these two data fields, we
will know that a person once held an advanced class license WITHOUT the medical
waiver and thus officially passed the 13wpm code element. [Whether or not the
person actually took the test or just paid for his license will generally never
be known!]

To me, the statement is more typical of some advanced class sourpuss who failed
to take advantage of the transitional rule back in 2000 and obtain credit for
the easier element 4B than the current element 4. Granted that was only for a
3.5 month window...

What surprises me is this: There are still some people (the August 30 session
I did had two such people) who are coming in for their pre-87-tech to general
no test upgrades, 3+ years after the rules change went into effect....



Is this for real? Are there REALLY people with Advanced licenses who
refuse to upgrade to Amateur Extra SIMPLY because they feel the need
to prove they passed the 13 wpm exam?


There are some misguided folks who think that, but in fact it's not a proof of
code speed any more than my Extra is proof of 20 per.



When it is known that a medical waiver wasn't used, it is (for pre April 19,
2000 extras).



Oh good! I got my extra on April 15, 2000 so I beat that deadline. :-)

"D. Stussy" wrote in message .org...
On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, Robert Casey wrote:
When it is known that a medical waiver wasn't used, it is (for pre April 19,
2000 extras).

Oh good! I got my extra on April 15, 2000 so I beat that deadline. :-)

NOT SO FAST: It was processed on April 18th, not the 15th. However, that is
still the day before the first "no-test" upgrades were processed, so we can
still tell that you have either a 20wpm extra or a waiver extra

Waiver Extra? This is the part where Dan Finn tackled me and said I
was making fun of disabled people. I wonder how he'll treat your use
of the phrase?

(based only on
the date - obviously more info needed to know which one of those). The first
"restructured" sessions on 4/15/2000 had results processed on April 19th.

Of course, your address change in December 2000 will obscure that fact for most
of the callbook users out there... but not me! ;-)

-----
What I fould really obnoxious is that for some test sessions in April 2000,
some VEC's had problems when the FCC changed their submission formats slightly
(because of the rules change) and some April sessions didn't have results show
up until mid-June 2000. It is possible that some 20wpm extras didn't have
their licenses issued until AFTER April 18th and by date are indistinguishable
from what some in this group called "extra lite."

And what I find obnoxious is that some people here continue to make
the distinction.

How easily you drop your convictions.

How easy it was to take $250 from some Brain Dead CBplussers

In article , "D. Stussy"
writes:

On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, N2EY wrote:
"just paid for his license"?

I certainly don't mean the $12 testing fee (by the ARRL teams, or the
equvalent
amount for teams under other VEC's).... Yes, some people have probably
"bought" their licenses in the past....

I don't have reliable evidence of any such fraud by either FCC or oldstyle
volunteer examiners (no caps).. Doesn't mean it never happened, just that I've
never seen any.

There *was* a vanity call selling operation that got an FCC employee time in
the Federal pokey (see posts by K2ASP for verification). And many of us
consider what Bash did to have been a rules violation.

One scam that was going on back in FCC days were a few people taking tests for
others. FCC started asking for ID and taking signatures.

There were some VE teams in this
area busted about 8 years ago for doing exactly that (supposedly, an extra
cost
$1k).

omigawd...

I occasionally see enforcement actions in the log where FCC calls people in for
a retest. Some do not show, some do show and fail, some show and pass.

To me, the statement is more typical of some advanced class sourpuss who
failed to take advantage of the transitional rule back in 2000 and obtain
credit for the easier element 4B than the current element 4. Granted that
was only for a 3.5 month window...

Maybe. But I think current Element 4 is no harder than old Element 4B.

I disagree. All the "hard" questions in the current Element 4 came from the
Element 4A part of the former tests. The former Element 4B was much easier
than 4A.

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that. But consider this: Old Element
4A was 50 questions and old 4B was 40. Each was graded separately, so if you
were even one short on the allegedly harder 4A, you could not even get to 4B.

New Element 4 is 50 questions from a combined pool. So if old 4A was "hard" and
4B was "easy", then combining the two and reducing the total questions from 90
to 50 effectively dilutes the test.

btw, I passed old 4A in 1968 as a 14 year old in the summer between 8th and 9th
grades. Back before Bashbooks and question pools. How hard could it have been?

What surprises me is this: There are still some people (the August 30
session I did had two such people) who are coming in for their pre-87-tech
to general no test upgrades, 3+ years after the rules change went into
effect....

I'm not surprised. Many hams I know do not follow the rules changes
anywhere
near as closely as some of us do. Look at restructuring - out of over
678,000
hams, FCC got 2200 or so comments.

Are you in a "high population" area? I am: Southern California.

Me too: metro Philadelphia. Along the Northeast Corridor, sometimes called
Boswash (Boston-to-Washington).

News of
rules changes gets around quickly over here... even among the clueless. I
agree that there may be places (e.g. midwest, rural farming states) where
knowledge of the changes has yet to permeate....

There are a lot of folks who simply haven't gotten the word, tho, or who don't
care. How else to explain the relatively small decline in Advanceds?

Some folks are just finding out what the changes mean. And with 10 year
renewals, folks who don't move around have very little interaction with FCC
license procedures. The facts are often twisted in the retelling, too.
Look at
the misunderstanding about Element 1 and Technicians....

Is this for real? Are there REALLY people with Advanced licenses who
refuse to upgrade to Amateur Extra SIMPLY because they feel the need
to prove they passed the 13 wpm exam?

There are some misguided folks who think that, but in fact it's not a
proof of code speed any more than my Extra is proof of 20 per.

When it is known that a medical waiver wasn't used, it is (for pre April
19,
2000 extras).

But you need more info that just the fact that the person holds a certain
license class.

I didn't say such wasn't true. All I said is that for some, such is KNOWN.

Sure. Point is, the same can be said for any license class. Just having an
Advanced proves only that the person did 5 wpm once-upon-a-time

Fun fact:

From May 14 2000 to July 31, 2003, the number of Advanceds dropped from
99,782 to 83,141. That includes upgrades to Extra and dropouts. Only a 17%
decline in over three years.

You should probably go back another 29 days to have a good total: Many
upgrades happened in that month you omit.

The reasons I chose May 14 we

1) I had those numbers available
2) It is long enough after April 15 that any pre-restructuring applications had
gotten through the FCC "pipeline".

73 de Jim, N2EY

On 1 Sep 2003 07:12:20 GMT, "Dick Carroll;" wrote:



Hans Kohb wrote:


73, de Hans, K0HB
(Who never took the Advanced test, went from Conditional to Amateur
Extra.)

That's exactly what I did.

Dick

As did my father.

As for me, my Extra class license showed up in the mail a week before
my Advanced licence. This of course was back in 1992, and the FCC was
getting better about issuing licences, instead of the 6 month wait
like I had to go through with the Novice licence.

AA7YA - ex-KB7PKE
(Novice to Extra in 12 months: Novice issued 8/24/92 : Extra issued
8/24/93)

ospam (Larry Roll K3LT) wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Brian) writes:


Jason, meet Bruce Bunion, WA8ULX. He's one of the originators of the
"I won't upgrade" Advanced Operators Club. What's his most recent
claim to fame? Run his call on QRZ and see.

Brian:

It seems like Bruce Beynon is doing OK for a guy who's 305 years old!

Bruce isn't doing good for any guy who'se any age. He's pretty much
the lowest common denominator on r.r.a.p.

OH, I get it now. Bunion.

Yes, "bunion." Jim says he doesn't have any minions.

I guess Kim would say, ROFLMTO!!!

73 de Larry, K3LT

You're fast approaching that lowest common denominator yourself.

(Brian) wrote in message . com...

You're fast approaching that lowest common denominator yourself.

Spoken like a guy who in indivisible by pi.

Steve, K4YZ

In article , S. Hanrahan
writes:


AA7YA - ex-KB7PKE
(Novice to Extra in 12 months: Novice issued 8/24/92 : Extra issued
8/24/93)

Not too shabby. I did it in about 18 months in the early '80's, in spite
of having to walk through waist-deep snow to get to the FCC Field
office, etc. etc.

73 de Larry, K3LT

On 05 Sep 2003 01:08:21 GMT, ospam (Larry Roll K3LT)
wrote:

Not too shabby. I did it in about 18 months in the early '80's, in spite
of having to walk through waist-deep snow to get to the FCC Field
office, etc. etc.

Know what you mean. I drove 100 miles in a blinding snowstorm to get
to the nearest VE session to take my Advanaced and Extra theory
elements.

My father upgraded from conditional to Extra while in college. The
FCC Field Office, was down the street from the college. To do that
today, that's 12 hours round trip.

Stacey, AA7YA