"Bill Sohl" wrote


The support is/was for ONE-TIME free upgrades as proposed by
the ARRL petition and one or two others. No support was
given to any permananent relaxation of written tests by NCI.


Under this NCI-endorsed plan, 345,802 current hams (using Jim's July 15th
census) would receive a PERMANENT relaxation of the requirement to test for
General and another 75,730 would receive a PERMANENT relaxation of the
requirement to test for Extra. That's means that 421,532 individuals, or 63.4%
of the existing hams, would suddenly hold licenses for which they had not passed
the current written examination. Trying to trivialize that as a simple
"one-time" adjustment is intellectually dishonest and a cop-out. By any
reasonable measure, NCI and ARRL both officially are on record as supporting a
lowering of the qualification requirement for General and Extra.

73, de Hans, K0HB