On May 2, 9:52�pm, wrote:
On Apr 26, 5:49?am, wrote:

Looking back over the past decade or so, I see the following trends:

- The number of US hams grew in the early 1990s but began a slow
decline in the late 1990s.
- The number of US hams grew in the early 2000s (2000-2003, after the
rules changes that went into effect in April 2000) but the growth was
not sustained and began a slow decline in the mid-2003
- The recent changes (Feb 2007) appear to have stopped the decline in
the short term.
- Both the 2000 and 2007 rules changes had the effect of a far greater
number of existing hams upgrading than new hams joining.

Was there really any expectation to the contrary, Jim?

One of the reasons given by those proposing the changes was to insure
the growth and survival of amateur radio in the 21st century.

There's not been ten cents worth of promotion of the new
licenure requirements in the non-Amateur press, ie: Pop Science, Pop
Mechanics, etc etc etc...

Do those mags even exist anymore? What's their circulation?

WE know all albout the changes...No one else does, and even if
the ARRL, CQ, W5YI, etc started the full court press I seriously doubt
we'd see more than that same brief surge as you noteed above....Oh, to
be sure there's going to be a handful of the 11 meter DX crowd that
decides to "go legal", but that's still a very samll percentage.

So how do we get the word out?

Nope...I think we're getting all the "influx" now that we will.
I've said it before and here it is again...Amateur Radio does NOT need
"big numbers"...We need to have QUALITY licensees..

Why can't we have both?

That means solid
skills and a NON-COMPROMISED question pool like we have today.

I'm not sure what you mean by "non-compromised".

If it means a secret test, forget it. The only way we'd ever get
secret tests again would be for FCC to take over the process, and
they're just not going to do that.

And even if FCC could somehow be convinced to take over the whole test
preparation and administration process, somebody could just repeat
Dick Bash's tricks of 30+ years ago, and the tests wouldn't stay
secret.

The one thing that *can* be done is to make the pools so big that it's
easier to learn the material than to learn the test.
Anyone can submit questions to the QPC.

73 de Jim, N2EY.