Dee Flint wrote:

I haven't decided whether to comment or not.

Dee D. Flint, N8UZE

I'd strongly suggest that you comment, Dee, regardless of
what your comments are. And regardless of whether they
affect the outcome at all.

For one thing, although some folks claim to know what the majority
wants,
the fact of that won't be known until all the comments are in. Last
time,
the majority didn't get what they wanted, though....

Of course someone trustworthy will have to read and categorize all the
comments for us to know what the majority wants. That was done back in
1998.

If nothing else, all of us can at least say that we let FCC know where
we stood.

--

One thing that I found unsettling about 98-143 was how *few*
comments were filed. FCC was proposing the biggest shakeup of
the license and test structure in many years, and they got maybe
2200 comments - from an amateur population of almost 700,000 hams
(not counting expired-but-in-the-grace-period licenses, clubs, etc.)

Such a low turnout is troubling, particularly considering how easy
FCC has made it to file comments. There's ECFS, which can accept a
brief comment typed-in, or a lengthier one as a file attachment.
There's comments by mail, in paper or electronic format. 98-143
had a very long comment period, yet only about 1 in 300 US hams
commented at all.

Back in the 1960s, when FCC proposed the changes that came to be
known as "incentive licensing", they got over 6000 comments. There
were only about 250,000 US hams back then, with no internet, no
email, no word-processing, etc.

Last time I looked there were over 600 comments on file.

73 de Jim, N2EY