In article , "Carl R. Stevenson"
writes:

Were it not for the no-code tech license since 1990, I'd bet we'd have
about 1/2 the number of licensed hams in the US that we have now.

Not a good bet, Carl! Good thing nobody will take you up on it.

For one thing, the Tech license lost its code test Feb 14, 1991, not in 1990.
But that's a minor point.

Take a look at the number of new hams per year and the growth of US licenses
from Feb 1991 until today. Then compare to the number of new hams per year and
the growth in a time period of the same length previous to Feb 1991. You'll see
that that the Tech's loss of its code test in Feb 1991 did cause an increase in
the number of new hams. But without that increase, we would not be down to
340,000 US hams by any reasonable scenario. Heck, there are ~423,000 US hams
today who are *not* Techs - that's a lot more than 1/2 the ~683,000.

Yes, there are almost 260,000 Techs today - but a large number of them are
actually Tech Pluses whom the FCC renewed as Techs since April 2000.

73 de Jim, N2EY