In article .net, "KØHB"
writes:

"Carl R. Stevenson" wrote

| 3) free upgrades for Techs and Tech Pluses to General?
|
| I was initially against this idea, thinking that taking the additional
| written element should be a requirement. However, I've read
| Ed Hare's excellent *personal, not ARRL policy* comments
| on this from eham, and find that they make sense to me - a
| compelling case for a "one-shot adjustment" to
| make things clean in a way that nobody loses anything.

I haven't seen Ed Hare's argument, so I can't comment on it.

Me neither - can you post a link?

If the
"adjustment" were some minor clean-up to sweep up the remnants of a long
abandoned legacy class and the number of licenses involved was trivial
(under 10,000), then I'd have no problem with it.

But we aren't dealing with some trival number, we are dealing with
almost 2/3rds of existing licensees.

??

Let's see - as of January 15, 2004:

Novice - 32,718
Technician - 259,949
Technician Plus - 62,714
General - 141,443
Advanced - 81,961
Extra - 104,946
Total - 683,731

Total Technicians and Pluses: 322,663

322,663/683,731 = about 47.2% of existing hams getting a free upgrade to
General
81,961/683,731 = about 11.9% of existing hams getting a free upgrade to Extra

Total of about 59.1% getting a free upgrade - wow!

The message ARRL sends with this proposal is "our General (and Extra)
qualifications" are more strenuous than need be. Such a free-pass would
establish that all these hundreds of thousands of licensees have been
qualified for General (or Extra) all along. At that moment it is
established, ipso facto, that the current Technician examination is
sufficient for the 'new General' and that the last Advanced examination
is sufficient for the 'new Extra'.

I agree 100%. And that's not the only message. Such giveaways also say that
the tests are so difficult that existing hams cannot be reasonably expected to
pass them on their own - but new hams have to!

Up until now I have never raised the cry of "dumbing down", but such a
mass give-away would set a new lower bar for all future qualification
levels in the Amateur Radio service, and your position allegedly in
support of strenuous technical qualification standards rings hollow
indeed.

Remember what I was talking about some weeks back, Hans - and Carl asked me to
be quiet in case someone got the idea?

There's no good reason I can see to give existing Techs, Tech Pluses and
Advanceds a bye on the writtens for the next license class.

73 de Jim, N2EY