"Bill Sohl" wrote in message ink.net...
"KØHB" wrote in message
news

"Bill Sohl" wrote
Only on a one-time basis.

If N2EY's latest post under "ARS License Numbers" is accurate,

It is.

and if the
"fix" was instituted today, the number of Amateur Extra licensees would
increase by 213% and the vast majority (69%) of this enlarged "Extra
Class"
would not qualify for the license under yesterdays rules or tomorrows
rules.

Given that sad state of affairs, now any NEW amateur hopefuls can
reasonably plead that any examination more comprehensive
than the current General discriminates against new applicants.

They can plead all they want...doesn't make it so. The FCC could
certainly counter argue the upgrades were a one-time need to
simplify the overall license structure.

But why is there such a need? Retaining closed-off license classes
like the Advanced and Novice simply requires that a certain field in
the FCC database have more alternatives and the retention of a few
paragraphs of Part 97 listing privs of those licenses.

Back in the days before electronic data, FCC kept the closed-off
Advanced class as a separate entity for more than a decade even though
it carried no additional privileges.

Their counter argument would utterly fail, because they'd first need to
prove that the "one-time need" over-rides the harm of a massive influx of
underqualified (by their own rules) individuals into the top class of
amateur operators. Judges rule on logic, not administrative convenience.

So how come when the Generals "lost" privileges in 1968 they didn't
win that same argument...i.e. you can't take privileges
from me because the new requirements aren't justified
since I already had those privileges via a lower class
license?

Two reasons:

1) The 1968 situation involved existing hams *losing* privs, not
getting a free upgrade.

2) What is proposed, if I read it correctly, is a one-time giveaway,
not a rules change.

The closest thing to it historically isn't 1968 but instead it's the
Great Giveaway of 1953, when FCC completely reversed its restructuring
of 1951 and opened all privs to all hams except Novices and Techs.

And I'll ask again - why is there a need to eliminate the closed-off
license classes? Tech Plus will disappear automatically no later than
6 years, 3 months and 10 days from now. Novice is down by about a
third and Advanced is slowly decreasing as well. What harm do these
old classes do?

73 de Jim, N2EY