In article , Robert Casey
writes:

IIRC, under the old system it took 5 written tests totalling 190 questions
to
reach full privileges. Heck, it took 2 writtens totalling 65 questions to
get a
Tech! That has been reduced to 3 written tests totalling 120 questions, A
Tech requires only a single 35 question test.

That's a significant reduction, IMHO.

I still think that the odds of passing a 100 question test and a 10
question test, if the questions are of the same level of difficulty,
is about the same. Anyway...

Maybe. But which *appears* to be more difficult to most newcomers:

"If you want to be a ham, you have to pass two tests, with a total of 100
questions"

or

"If you want to be a ham, you have to pass a 10 question test"

?

But it hasn't resulted in sustained
growth. Neither has the loss of nearly all code testing. Nor the
no-code-test
Technician, nor code test waivers, etc. etc.

True, but I don't know why.

Nobody really does.

But all this indicates that the old nocodetest mantra that "code tests are
keeping out hordes of 'otherwise qualified' people" is simply false. And now
folks like NCVEC (which is to say, W5YI and a few buddies) are pushing for even
simpler entry licensing. Which is simply wrong.

I think lack of publicity is one big factor. Another is competition from other
technical avocations. Add to this the fact that some of the reasons to be a ham
years ago have vanished. Example: I know some hams who got licenses simply to
keep in touch with family members. Decades ago, when longdistance telephone
calls were expensive, it was family members across the continent. Years ago,
when cell phones were expensive, it was for local honeydew comms. Today those
reasons have all but vanished.

Maybe a few advertisements placed in magazines (horrors) CBers
and (even worse!) freebanders read can find some new "born
again" "repentant" people to get a ham license and swear off
freebanding...? Now that the sunspots are out of season?

I don't think so. In my experience, a lot of those folks simply don't want
to
be licensed. Has nothing to do with the tests, and everything to do with
perception.

Maybe you're right. Some years ago I exchanged a few emails with a
freebander hobbyist trying to convince him that a ham license would
be a good thing for him to get. Not by shameing him for freebanding,
but telling of the many things you can do legally on many different
kinds of bands as a ham. But he mentioned an experience of not
liking the hams at some random ham club he once visited. That's
the preception issue you mentioned.

It was a long shot....

That's one perception. Here's another:

Hams are licensed by the feds and the vast majority of them follow the rules -
all the rules. Which means that even though they could run superpower, they
don't, and even though their rigs go outside the ham bands, they won't use 'em
there. Etc. Part of the reason is that the FCC knows where hams live, etc., but
a bigger part is that "it's just not done" by hams.

IOW, most of hamdom is pretty straight-arrow law-abiding.

Freeband is exactly the opposite. Almost everyhting hams consider important,
they ignore, and vice versa. So why would one be attracted to the other?

73 de Jim, N2EY