"KH6HZ" wrote in message
...
"Mike Coslo" wrote:

PStU has a credit course - EE 010S.

None of the area colleges do it -- that is, give instant credit because
you have a ham license. Like I previously stated, though, I believe some
(if not most) would allow you to petition for credit on the basis of 'life
experience', and you probably would have a relative degree of success.


If I may, I can't help but notice that the olde time hams must have
been born knowing all about HF or something. Look at the Extra test, and
tell me that you will take a random group from off the street, set them
down, and say 80 percent will pass the test? I think I'm pretty generous
giving you a 20 percent spot from "anyone" to 80 percent.

I doubt if you take anyone off the street at random they could pass any
element test. However, study materials are easily obtained and, IMO,
virtually anyone can pass with a minimal amount of effort put into
studying them.


I disagree. I've taught classes where the students had no math background
beyond basic high school math and they also had very limited ham experience.
They had to work very hard to get the material, especially the Extra class
material.

Even if they just chose to memorize the questions, it isn't easy to memorize
400+ questions for Tech, 400+ questions for General and 800+ questions for
Extra.


That will not change until that inactive groupp of Technicians is
flushed from the rolls. They have not been active since cell phones
became ascendent. The Honeydo list is handled quite nicely by that
technology.


Amateur radio is a dead hobby.

No, it isn't, and won't be dying either. Perhaps your definition of
Ham Radio is fading away - a definition that I would guess where rank is
measured by how fast a person can send and recieve Morse code.

In the mid 90's when I routinely posted to this newsgroup, I made many
observations that I felt the number of licensed hams was being artifically
increased due to the extension of the licensing term from 5 to 10 years.
Likewise, I made comments regarding the attrition rate of licensees
resulting from the Tech license.

Starting in early '03, almost 12 years to the month the Tech license came
on the scene (10 year license term + 2 year grace period), the number of
licensed hams has steadily declined. This negative slope has continued,
relatively unabated, for the past 3 years. I do not expect it to reverse
the trend ever again. The best that may happen is there may be some form
of equilibrum achieved where the number of licensed hams remains constant
+/- a few thousand as expirations and new licensees fluctuate.


The Tech license existed before that. I believe that you are actually
referring to when the codeless Technician license was created. Compared to
the total number of licensees at this time, it's a pretty shallow slope. It
could potentially stop declining in about 2010 or perhaps a year or two
later. That will pretty much have flushed out the cell phone hams since
2000 to 2002 is about when cell phones really started becoming common and
relatively affordable.

Dee, N8UZE