"Dee D. Flint" wrote in message
.com...

"N2EY" wrote in message
...
In article , "Dee D.
Flint"
writes:

I did some exploring around in the FCC database and it appears that
there
is
a way to determine these things. When a person changes call signs or
upgrades and so on, the old one is marked as "terminated" not
"expired".

Is this really the case? I thought an upgrade is considered a
modification.
It's my understanding that an upgrade does not extend the license term,
but a
vanity call does (to avoid having to prorate the vanity fee).


I'm talking about when they actually change call signs, the old call sign
is
marked as terminated. The person's license is modified with the new call
sign but that is listed as a new grant date. I believe an upgrade does
extend the license but a change of address does not.

The term "expired" appears to be used only when a person has neither
renewed
nor upgraded. This is based on checking the call signs of persons that
I
know upgraded. Changing a name or address does not result in either an
"expired" or "terminated" on the call sign. So if one uses the the
feature
so search on the Amateur Radio Service rather than the basic search and
types in dates and checks "expired" and specifies the license class,
you
should get those and only those that were not renewed. The numbers are
indeed rather large. Note however, it isn't marked as "expired" until
the
two year grace period has elapsed from what I can determine by
exploring
the
data base.

Interesting stuff, Dee! I wonder how much of this was done by the "97%"
folks.

So using the time period 10/18/2000 through 10/18/2001, here are the
number
of expired licenses that pop up.

Novice - 5645 expired in that one year time frame
Tech - 3811 expirations
Tech+ - 3687 expirations

This is a total loss of 13,143 of licensees in the year from 10/18/2000
to
10/18/2001.

In those three license classes, anyway. But this info raises a question:
If
your method only counts licenses which have reached the end of the grace
period
without a renewal, then the expirations listed above are those for
licenses
issued or renewed during the period 10/18/1998 to 10/18/1999. But that
time
period is before the Tech/Tech Plus split!


I was indeed focusing on the various entry level licenses as the debate
has
been over how many people stuck with it. These figures would be for
licenses
issued between 10/18/1990 and 10/18/1991. Their grace period expired
10/18/2003 and that is when they show up in the database as expired. That
is to say the expiration date listed in the database is 10 years from the
grant date although it won't show as expired in the database until the two
year grace period has elapsed. For example, if I enter an expired date
range covering the past year, it shows NO expired licenses. That's
because
they are still in the grace period and will not be listed as such until
that
grace period is up. I hope I've explained it clearly. If not let me know
and I will try again.



Just for kicks, I went back and looked up the number of expirations for the
other classes for the same time period (10/18/2000 through 10/18/2001).

General - 1654 expirations
Advanced - 902 expirations
Extra - 493 expirations.

Total = 3049 expirations

Based on other postings in this thread, the number of licensees holding
Novice/Tech/Tech+ licensees in May of 2000 was 383,583. Those holding
General/Advanced/Extra class licenses numbered 291,209. While I should go
back and make my time period start with May 2000 to be really comparable,
I'm just going to use the figures that I have for the next calculation as it
shouldn't make a whole lot of difference. The percentage of
Novice/Tech/Tech+ licenses that expired was approximately 3.4% in that one
year time period. The percentage of General/Advanced/Extra licenses that
expired was approximately 1.0% in that same time frame.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE