In article , "D. Stussy"
writes:

On Mon, 1 Sep 2003, N2EY wrote:
"just paid for his license"?

I certainly don't mean the $12 testing fee (by the ARRL teams, or the
equvalent
amount for teams under other VEC's).... Yes, some people have probably
"bought" their licenses in the past....

I don't have reliable evidence of any such fraud by either FCC or oldstyle
volunteer examiners (no caps).. Doesn't mean it never happened, just that I've
never seen any.

There *was* a vanity call selling operation that got an FCC employee time in
the Federal pokey (see posts by K2ASP for verification). And many of us
consider what Bash did to have been a rules violation.

One scam that was going on back in FCC days were a few people taking tests for
others. FCC started asking for ID and taking signatures.

There were some VE teams in this
area busted about 8 years ago for doing exactly that (supposedly, an extra
cost
$1k).

omigawd...

I occasionally see enforcement actions in the log where FCC calls people in for
a retest. Some do not show, some do show and fail, some show and pass.

To me, the statement is more typical of some advanced class sourpuss who
failed to take advantage of the transitional rule back in 2000 and obtain
credit for the easier element 4B than the current element 4. Granted that
was only for a 3.5 month window...

Maybe. But I think current Element 4 is no harder than old Element 4B.

I disagree. All the "hard" questions in the current Element 4 came from the
Element 4A part of the former tests. The former Element 4B was much easier
than 4A.

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on that. But consider this: Old Element
4A was 50 questions and old 4B was 40. Each was graded separately, so if you
were even one short on the allegedly harder 4A, you could not even get to 4B.

New Element 4 is 50 questions from a combined pool. So if old 4A was "hard" and
4B was "easy", then combining the two and reducing the total questions from 90
to 50 effectively dilutes the test.

btw, I passed old 4A in 1968 as a 14 year old in the summer between 8th and 9th
grades. Back before Bashbooks and question pools. How hard could it have been?

What surprises me is this: There are still some people (the August 30
session I did had two such people) who are coming in for their pre-87-tech
to general no test upgrades, 3+ years after the rules change went into
effect....

I'm not surprised. Many hams I know do not follow the rules changes
anywhere
near as closely as some of us do. Look at restructuring - out of over
678,000
hams, FCC got 2200 or so comments.

Are you in a "high population" area? I am: Southern California.

Me too: metro Philadelphia. Along the Northeast Corridor, sometimes called
Boswash (Boston-to-Washington).

News of
rules changes gets around quickly over here... even among the clueless. I
agree that there may be places (e.g. midwest, rural farming states) where
knowledge of the changes has yet to permeate....

There are a lot of folks who simply haven't gotten the word, tho, or who don't
care. How else to explain the relatively small decline in Advanceds?

Some folks are just finding out what the changes mean. And with 10 year
renewals, folks who don't move around have very little interaction with FCC
license procedures. The facts are often twisted in the retelling, too.
Look at
the misunderstanding about Element 1 and Technicians....

Is this for real? Are there REALLY people with Advanced licenses who
refuse to upgrade to Amateur Extra SIMPLY because they feel the need
to prove they passed the 13 wpm exam?

There are some misguided folks who think that, but in fact it's not a
proof of code speed any more than my Extra is proof of 20 per.

When it is known that a medical waiver wasn't used, it is (for pre April
19,
2000 extras).

But you need more info that just the fact that the person holds a certain
license class.

I didn't say such wasn't true. All I said is that for some, such is KNOWN.

Sure. Point is, the same can be said for any license class. Just having an
Advanced proves only that the person did 5 wpm once-upon-a-time

Fun fact:

From May 14 2000 to July 31, 2003, the number of Advanceds dropped from
99,782 to 83,141. That includes upgrades to Extra and dropouts. Only a 17%
decline in over three years.

You should probably go back another 29 days to have a good total: Many
upgrades happened in that month you omit.

The reasons I chose May 14 we

1) I had those numbers available
2) It is long enough after April 15 that any pre-restructuring applications had
gotten through the FCC "pipeline".

73 de Jim, N2EY