On Feb 25, 8:13 am, wrote:
On Feb 25, 5:23?am, "KH6HZ" wrote:





"Dee Flint" wrote:
The 3 testing for new licenses is, for all intents and purposes, what I
have had at test sessions before the rules changed. ?Although one datum is
not sufficient to really draw any conclusions, this does not bode well for
growth.

There is a saying we teach statistics students: "one observation does not
equal a trend".

I believe that in the "what effect will this have on licensing numbers"
thread, I stated we would see a 0 to -1% growth as a result of these
changes.

I believe in that thread I stated I felt we would see a huge number of
increases from the lower licenses classes to the higher classes (i.e. lots
of techs upgrading to extra).

The end result of the 2000 restructuring
was exactly that. A lot of existing hams
upgraded, and for a few years we saw
some growth. But the long term result has
been a decrease in the number of US
hams.

I believe it was Jim (N2EY, but I may have the
attribution wrong) who stated for the first time in the past 15 years since
the creation of the no-code tech license, we might see an actual *DECREASE*
in the number of licensed hams in that license class.

I don't remember writing anything like that. But I
could be mistaken about it.

I will say this: Simply looking at the number of
Technicians can lead to wrong conclusions.
Since 4/15/2000, FCC has been renewing all
Technician Pluses as Technicians. Also, a Novice
who passes Element 2 after 4/15/2000 gets a Technician, not a Tech
Plus. So the Technician totals actually include both code-tested and
non-code-tested hams. Assuming that all
hams listed as Technicians after 4/15/2000
are not code tested is/was just plain wrong.

In about three years there should be no more
Tech Pluses at all, as they will all have either
upgraded, expired, or been renewed as Technician.
Kinda like what happened to Conditionals 30 years
ago.

When you look at the total number of
Technicians and Tech Pluses combined,
there are fewer today than on May 14, 2000.

It should also be remembered that since 4/15/2000
all licensed hams who had ever passed a code test
could upgrade to Extra without any more code testing - just written
testing. Also, anyone who
could provide documents showing they had *ever*
held a Novice or code-tested Technician got credit
for Element 1, even of the license had expired
decades ago.

What all this boils down to is that we will soon see
how much of a "barrier to growth" Morse Code
testing actually was. If it were *really* a barrier,
we will see big jumps in both the number of new
hams and the number of upgraders. The ARS
License Numbers thread will tell the tale.

Jim, you're severely neglecting the temporal aspects of the barrier.
Back when there was a lot of interest in amateur radio, there was a
lot of people turned off and/or turned away by the Morse Code
requirement.

Many of those people have moved on.

IMHO, the real "barrier to growth" wasn't the license
test requirements at all. Rather, it is simple lack of
publicity about amateur radio.

Do you have an ARRL "Hello" bumper sticker on your vehicle? "Hello"
was to be a campaign about inviting people into amateur radio.

Amateur radio is fundamentally "radio for its own
sake". Radio as an end in itself, rather than a
means to some other end like avoiding long
distance telephone charges or the cost of a cell
phone.

Cell phones and service are far cheaper...

Most people are simply not interested in "radio for
its own sake" no matter what the requirements. That's
been true since radio was invented.

But a small percentage of people *are* interested.
The challenge is to find them and inform them of
the existence of amateur radio - because many of
them don't even know it exists, or have a very
distorted idea of what amateur radio is.

IMHO

Consider this: When's the last time you saw
Amateur Radio portrayed in the movies or on
TV in a positive and accurate manner, and in
such a way that a nonham could understand that
amateur radio exists today and they could be a
ham if interested?

73 de Jim, N2EY

I don't watch much TV, Jim, so you tell me.