In article , "Carl R. Stevenson"
writes:
"N2EY" wrote in message
...
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.
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.
Jim,
Of that 423k US hams who are not Techs, how many do you suppose started
out as Techs and have since upgraded?
I don't know, exactly. Neither do you, I bet ;-)
But why does it matter?
You are assuming that if the Tech still had a code test, none of those hams who
got Techs would have gotten a ham license. That's not a reasonable assumption
at all.
From 1979 to 1991, the number of US hams grew from about 350,000 to about
550,000 - all of them code-tested. From 1991 to 2003, the number grew from
about 550,000 to about 683,000. (If someone has more accurate numbers, please
post them!). We had growth with code tests and growth without code tests.
Back in 1991 there were about 550,000 US hams, all of them code-tested. By
April of 2000 there were about 675,000 US hams, of which about 205,000 were
Techs. Since then the renewal of Tech Pluses as Techs clouds the issue.
How many SKs and dropouts would
have reduced the population without the newcomers coming in to replace them.
Depends on the dropout rate. The important thing is you *assume* that we
wouldn't have any newcomers if they all had to pass code tests. That's simply
not a reasonable assumption.
Maybe 50% is a slight stretch, but I'd guess not by a lot.
I'd say an awful lot. Look up how many new hams we got per year in the '80s
compared to the '90s.
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.
Out of 10 years of NCTs, only a few years worth would fall into that
category.
The Tech hasn't had a code test for almost 13 years.
FCC has been renewing Tech Pluses as Techs for 3 years, 8 months and 18 days.
If no rules changes are made, there will not be any Tech Pluses at all in 6
years, 3 months and 13 days from now.
I would bet that a LOT of the Tech Pluses that existed in April of 2000 are
now
Generals or Extras, rather than having been renewed as Techs with code
credit.
How many is "a lot"? The number of Tech Pluses has dropped by about half since
April 2000. Some of that drop is due to upgrades. Some of it is due to
dropouts. And some of it is due to renewal as Techs.
To say that we'd only have 340,000 hams today if all hams were code-tested is
simply not reasonable.
Here are some numbers:
In order to grow from 350K to 550K in 12 years, the number of newcomers would
have to be at least 17,000 per year, even if there were no dropouts at all.
Now let's suppose that the changes of 1991 never happened, and that we were
still getting only 17,000 new hams per year. And suppose that the dropout rate
of those 1991 hams from then to the present was 2.5% per year .(average ham
"career" of 40 years).
Then in the 12 years, we'd have lost about 26% of those who were hams in 1991.
That's a loss of 143,000 hams, bringing the total down to 407,000. We'd have
gained 204,000 new hams, bringing the total up to 611,000.
That's a long way from 340,000.
73 de Jim, N2EY
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