From: Leo on Mon, Feb 26 2007 3:38 pm

wrote:
From: Leo on Sun, Feb 25 2007 10:57 am
On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:15:28 -0500, Leo wrote:
On 13 Feb 2007 16:43:31 -0800, wrote:
On Feb 13, 5:13?pm, Leo wrote:
On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:12:59 -0500, Leo wrote:
On 8 Feb 2007 18:01:57 -0800, wrote:


The Technician class is *not* now bigger
than all other US license classes combined.
And if present trends continue, it never will be.

Perhaps! Perhaps not.

Hmmm.....no rebuttal comments regarding the points listed above for 12
days now.

Hope you enjoyed the math lesson - we'll do it again soon!

I don't think he did...probably because he can't
control the subject being argued, especially the
comparisons he insists on using. :-)

Good point!

CONTROL is everything in this medium. :-)

Miccolis has the annoying habit of trying to solidify
his comparisons of His making, then saying another's
comparison are "wrong" or "mistaken" or some such.

For example, he keeps OMITTING all USA licensees from
totals if they are in the US 2-year grace period. Since
he hasn't presented HOW he determines this (it can be
done from FCC database data fields), everyone has to
take his data on face value. I mean how many have the
time and high-speed connections to grab a daily 80 MB+
data file and sort it? :-)

Now, on this "grace period:" Contrary to implied
belief, the FCC still considers those licensees to
be licensees. Why would they hold the callsigns in
abbeyance until they are renewed? US Regulations
state that licensees cannot operate when in the grace
period until renewed, but they are still "hams" other-
wise. Over a long period of licensing, one can simply
take 5/6th of the totals for a class and say those are
"in the grace period" and not be far off the actual,
exact, uber-pedantic grace period.


At present data on the 25th, the total of no-code-test
Techs to Tech-Plus is 352,210 (40,262 Tech Plus). The
number of INDIVIDUAL licensees (less Club calls) on
the 25th is 711,390. Combined, Tech and Tech-Plus are
49.51% of the total. Yes, that is NOT 50.01% but it is
so damn close to 50% that only an unreasonable pedant
would make a case for it "not being larger!" :-)

Agreed.

In looking at the www.hamdata.com figures by class for
26th February and comparing it with the 22nd (day before
the sky fell on morsemen), there's the barest smidgen
of a trend.

Overall US individual licensee totals fell by 44 (711,432
minus 711,388). Technician class (the evil no-code-test
one that is 'supposed' to be causing all the drop-outs)
went from 311,851 on the 22nd to 311,966 on the 26th.
That's a gain of 115! Except for that short one-day
drop (24th to 25th) of 30, no-code-test Technician class
has been steadily INCREASING. Extras went from 111,464 on
the 22nd to 111,500 on the 26th, a gain of 36 and Generals
went from 142,031 on the 22nd to 142,051 on the 26th,
another gain, of 20. ALL the other classes showed losses.

By the way, the combined Tech and Tech-Plus classes
(352,199) now make up 49.51% of all USA individual
amateur radio licensees. Slow but inexorable growth
trend (albeit very small) despite Tech-Plus losses of
147 from 22nd to 26th. There's a higher-than-even
probability that many Tech-Plusses upgraded to other
classes since the 22nd. Just the same, individual
licensee grand-sum total shows a small decrease in just
five days.


Regardless of the source of the numbers, the results would be more
believable if the calculations were shown for each
category.....otherwise, the numbers are just that - numbers. Numbers
which can be tailored to support one's own agenda, should they wish to
do so....

Plus, our resident - ahem - statistician does not have much of a track
record here in the rigorous calculations area......lol

Well, let's just say that NASA won't be consulting
him anytime soon to help plot Earth to Moon or Earth
to Mars space trips... :-)



Agreed. Refer to the 'average distance to the Moon' that I called him
on......I presented detailed reasoning to show his error - he simply
restated his position over and over, as if doing do made it correct!

Looks like a familiar pattern.

VERY - unfortunately - familiar pattern. :-(


There appears to be a belief amongst some here that the removal of
code testing will open the floodgates, resulting in an influx of new
hobbyists who saw code as a barrier, and up to now stayed out of
Amateur Radio.

That's the PRO-code-testing rationale. It is wrong,
of course, but if that is repeated often enough by
lots of morsemen, it will become "CW" (Conventional
Wisdom).

I don't believe that this is likely to happen. Of course, there are
some who may have been held back by Morse code testing alone (which
may have been true in 1960, but not in communications rich 2007) - but
I'd say that the vast majority of people interested in becoming hams
have already done so.

I agree with you there. But it's almost impossible to
convince the olde-tymers that. :-(

Having observed US amateur radio since the late 1940s
until now, the amount of "real" publicity given about
amateur radio OUTSIDE of the amateur radio community
is limited to the occasional "filler" piece in the
newspapers on weekends or slow news days. It is a
quaint hobby thing done by either kids or retirees
from the general newspaper stories. That overlooks
some REAL efforts done by experimenters (such as a
home-made, precision Vector Network Analyzer) or the
emergency communicators (a group in Arizona having
modified RVs ready-to-roll in very quick notice).

The USA ARRL has simply failed to get any substantive
network and newspaper attention about amateur radio
for YEARS. If they do, it will prominently feature
'officers' of the League...which is itself indicative
of what They seem to have wanted all along. :-(

It is nice that respected newsman Walter Cronkhite
has narrated a special video. Big problem is that
such a video is USELESS to the purpose of attracting
anyone in the general public to ham radio if it airs
in the wee small hours of morning or on "community
channel" cable.

Considering the paradoxical manner in which Morse code testing was
dropped in the US, new wannabe hams still have the hurdle of two exams
to pass before they hit the General level and have significant access
to the HF voice subbands. The Tech and Tech Plus licensees gained very
little when code was dropped - a small voice allotment on 10m (not
worth the expense of setting up an HF station for...), and (here's the
paradox...) access to three HF CW subbands, which are useless to them
without the ability to use Morse code!

I know, but *I* wasn't going to fight that after
trying to drop code testing for over 15 years...

So, the newbies get some (however slight) "action
space" for "CW"...which is really a sop or compromise
to the stridency of olde-tyme hamme morsemen. Maybe
some try it out and do it for a while. It's a safe
bet that the 'establishment' (hard-core morsemen)
aren't going to be kind to them. :-(

For this reason alone, I would
expect to see a decrease in the Tech categories, and a proportionate
increase in the General category (and to a lesser degree, Extra),
representing the Techs who wish to take advantage of the Morse-free HF
access at that level.

I disagree a bit based on my observations in one corner of
a large urban area of the southwestern USA. The interest
of newbies here seems to be for the Technician class.
Given an urban population of roughly 8 million in a 120 by
60 mile area, VHF and up works out very well for contacts
that they can actually meet in-person. Of course, the
Greater L.A. Area is one where the auto rules what
happens and that may not apply to other USA locations.
Again, by direct observation, Techs seem to be younger in
age than the other classes (discounting Novice) and prefer
the company of those nearer their own age. One could see
the same thing two decades ago on the "social" BBSs (those
that had regular in-person gatherings of members). The
"age" group is NOT necessarily just chronological...those
who are bright, lively, alert, flexible with differing
mores and opinions have a "younger" mental age.

The stodgy olde-tymer will take umbrage to that since
they maintain They are bright, lively, etc., but they
overlook the fact that They are holding to thoughts of
a bygone era, three to four decades ago when They were
chronologically young. Social mores CHANGE and They
can't always adapt to that, preferring the company of
those with like minds (or 'hive minds').


After this correction, it should level off -
then it's dead guys and decreases for the forseeable future, unless
the younger members of society get r-e-a-l-l-y bored with the
Internet, cellphones, text messaging and IM!

I agree with the "dead guys and decreases." I don't
quite agree with the others. Yes, the Internet and
cell phone has become the new phenomenon of NOW. Folks
of now ARE affluent enough to afford cell phones and
unlimited-service 'Net accounts. NOW is NOT the
wind-coils-on-round-oatmeal-containers style of pre-
WW2 times or futzing with "crystal sets" and pi-net
two-tube MOPAs in the "most economical manner."
NOW is NOT the 1960s or the 1950s with attendant
monetary values.

The USA pushed a "radio panic button" with 11m CB back
in 1958. A decade later the off-shore makers of
inexpensive but fully-functional, all-channel mobile
or fixed transceivers for the UNlicensed was the lift-
off for communicating. The DESIRE to communicate was
always there. The growth of the BBS and BBS networks
is a different thing but still indicative of a desire
to communicate. That worked until the Internet went
public just 16 years ago...competition in means, a way
that forced most BBSs to just give up. Cell phones
are slightly older but not much...again the DESIRE to
communicate is there and evident from supermarkets to
sidewalks.

Amateur radio CAN help that DESIRE to communicate. But,
it will just shoot itself down if it stays mired in
what was "gee-whiz technology" four decades ago...or the
competition to collect as much wallpaper as possible
(which isn't real communication, just an odd contest).
Amateur radio just can't get anywhere if all the
cheering sections just spend all their time giving each
other high-fives on "how good we are" or "we are the
pioneers of radio" (very, very past tense). Self-
praise is something done here in moom pitchas (see
Sunday's Oscar Awards). The difference is that the
motion picture industry THRIVES on publicity; amateur
radio publicity outside of itself is almost nil.

73, LA