From: Dee Flint on Jul 20, 9:16 pm


wrote in message
roups.com...
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_publi...C-05-143A1.doc


Well now we will see if the Techs are paying attention.

As of 1200 UTC on 21 July 2005, there were 349,859 of them...

That's the total of Technician and Technician Plus classes
in the USA...48.46% of all individual amateur radio licensees.

If they are, we
should (but I bet we won't) see a major increase in people taking element 3
over the next several months as the FCC should have this wrapped up before
their CSCEs expire.

There are a third of a million CSCEs outstanding?!? Outstanding!

And now we'll see how many people have been "kept out by the Morse code".

"Kept out of WHAT?" :-) Radio? No.

Had the NO-CODE-TEST Technician class not been created 14 years
ago, the present number of U.S. amateur radio licensees would
have DROPPED by at least 200,000.

Of course we'll need to monitor over several years to see if their is a
trend. A few months won't tell us a thing.

WT Docket 05-235 has to be published in the Federal Register
first...with at least 75 days of Comments/Replies to Comments
following, then a (long?) wait for the Report and Order.

A "trend?!?" The total number of U.S. amateur radio licensees
has been dropping about three thousand per year since the peak
of July 2003. Expirations (of all classes) has exceeded the
number of NEW licensees. Novice class licensee totals have
been dropping steadily for almost two decades. The total of
Technician and Technician Plus classes is at 48.46% of all
individual licensees and might hit 50% by the end of 2005.

"Their [sic] IS a trend!" It's been there all along. New
licensees are NOT attracted by the majestic nobility and
sanctity of morse code as much as you'd like to think. The
old ways are dying...not quickly, but inexorably. Embrace
the NEW, not the old. RADIO...all of it...has been in a
constant transition in the 52+ years I've been in it...and
I started in it without any license, certainly not requiring
any morsemanship skills.