"Dee Flint" wrote in message


[snip]

I did not mention or imply anything to do with emergency
communications or CW. I merely stated that the
fascinating part was to be able to contact people without
the need for an infrastructure. There is a feeling of
independence from being able to, as an individual,
communicate around the world.
Dee, N8UZE

I agree. People often ask me why I use 2m & 70cm in the car, for example,
when everyone (well, nearly everyone) has a mobile phone (cellphone for
you US types..!). I always answer that you can't put a blind CQ call out
on a phone. That's the attraction for me, you never know who might reply
to a call.

73 Ivor G6URP

On Mar 17, 3:38�pm, "Dee Flint" wrote:

In my opinion there is another motivator. *To me, the main fascination is
being able to communicate without the need for any infrastructure. *All I
need is my radio, the stuff to make a basic dipole, a source of power, and
my mike or key. *Nothing ties us together except the ionosphere. *On top of
all that, when conditions are moderately good, it can be done with
relatively small amounts of power. *i.e. *It is the ability to basically do
this independently.

Dee,

At one time I would put all that under "operating radios",
but I think you have hit on something that deserves its own
classification. Or at least more words.

What you describe is a combination of independence and
simplicity. It's partly about not being dependent on a communications
infrastructure other than your station, the
other station(s), and natural features like the ionosphere,
troposphere, etc. It's also partly about the relative simplicity
of an amateur station compared to the enormous but largely
unseen complexity of other modern communications
systems. Sure, I can call Australia on my cell phone - but
the cell phone is only one small part of the enormous and
complex infrastructure needed to make the call.

In amateur radio, the complex infrastructure is replaced by
a combination of luck (propagation) and operator skill.
This makes for unpredictable communications at times -
which is actually a big part of the attraction. When I call
CQ, or listen for another's CQ, I don't know who I'll run into,
whether I'll contact them or not, etc.

IMHO, one of the things many people miss in modern life is
a certain feeling of actually doing something start-to-finish. In most
jobs nowadays, people are part of a team, or a process, contributing
their specialized part to the result. This
is how our complex technological society is able to function
so efficiently.

The downside is that very few people today can point to
something in their work and say "I did that, start to finish,
all by myself". In fact, many things that people used to do
for themselves like car repair/maintenance and fixing things
are either too complex for the DIY person, or are not
meant to be fixed economically.

Amateur radio (and many other DIY activities) offer a way for people
to actually do something start-to-finish, all by
themselves. That's a key point is 'selling' amateur radio.

It's also a big reason behind homebrewing - the
homebrewer knows every part of the radio, how it works,
and how to fix it. That it may not be state-of-the-art or have
all the features of a manufactured item is besides the point.
That's something that simply cannot be bought.

73 de Jim, N2EY

On Mar 17, 5:25�pm, Cecil Moore wrote:
Dee Flint wrote:
In my opinion there is another motivator. *To me, the main fascination is
being able to communicate without the need for any infrastructure.

Good luck at being in the right place at the right
time when all other infrastructure fails. I've been
a coded ham for 55 years and have yet to use CW for
any emergency communications. The only HF emergency
communications I ever needed to use was CB.

I was under the impression that the "CW-vs-every other mode" stuff
was over.

Nes pas?

Steve, K4YZ

wrote:
I've been
a coded ham for 55 years and have yet to use CW for
any emergency communications. The only HF emergency
communications I ever needed to use was CB.

I was under the impression that the "CW-vs-every other mode" stuff
was over.

My ham experience is mostly limited to CW so I
cannot speak for the other modes.
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com

wrote in message
ups.com...
These are the number of current,
unexpired FCC-issued amateur
radio licenses held by individuals
on the stated dates, and the
percentage of the total number
of active licenses that class contains.

---

73 de Jim, N2EY


The Changing Operating Classes
Over the past year the Technician class has increased at an average rate of
13/day.

The Tech Plus class has decreased at an average rate of 27/day.

The Novice class has decreased at an average rate of 9/day.

The General class has increased at an average rate of 7/day.

The Advanced class has decreased at an average rate of 12/day.

The Extra class has increased at an average rate of 6/day.

Club Stations have increased at an average rate of 1/day.

73, Ace - www.WH2T.com


..

"Dr.Ace" wrote:

The Changing Operating Classes

Over the past year the Technician class has increased at an average rate
of 13/day.

As the de-facto entry-level license in ham radio, I would expect it to
increase the most of all the license classes.

The Tech Plus class has decreased at an average rate of 27/day.
The Novice class has decreased at an average rate of 9/day.
The Advanced class has decreased at an average rate of 12/day.

Since the FCC is no longer issuing any of these licenses, it is
mathematically impossible for them to "increase" at all. The very best they
could do would be to maintain their exact numbers, assuming a 100% renewal
rate and a 0% upgrade rate out of these classes into others.


The General class has increased at an average rate of 7/day.
The Extra class has increased at an average rate of 6/day.

Or, a combined rate of 13/day, the same daily rate of increase in the
Technician class license. An interesting statistical fluke?

73
kh6hz

On Mar 31, 8:57?am, "Dr.Ace" wrote:
wrote in message

ups.com...

These are the number of current,
unexpired FCC-issued amateur
radio licenses held by individuals
on the stated dates, and the
percentage of the total number
of active licenses that class contains.

---

73 de Jim, N2EY

The Changing Operating Classes
Over the past year the Technician class has increased at an average rate of
13/day.

The Tech Plus class has decreased at an average rate of 27/day.

The Novice class has decreased at an average rate of 9/day.

The General class has increased at an average rate of 7/day.

The Advanced class has decreased at an average rate of 12/day.

The Extra class has increased at an average rate of 6/day.

Club Stations have increased at an average rate of 1/day.

73, Ace -www.WH2T.com

The above is identical to the home page data shown at
www.hamdata.com and reflects the changing class
numbers one month (plus a few days) after the ending
of US amateur radio license code testing.

In the year prior to cessation of code testing, the no-code-
test Technician class license growth had been in the
vicinity of 28 to 30 per day average...with General and
Amateur Extra class growth at half (or so) the values
shown above. The only conclusion I can draw from that
growth is the upgrading of Technicians to General or
Extra, lessening the "growth" of Technicians due to their
class change.

Curiously, there has been a growth of Club licenses
granted in the last year. I would have thought that Club
licenses were relatively static since the overall licensee
totals showed little growth or decline in numbers?

73, Len AF6AY

On Mar 31, 11:57?am, "Dr.Ace" wrote:
wrote in message

ups.com...

These are the number of current,
unexpired FCC-issued amateur
radio licenses held by individuals
on the stated dates, and the
percentage of the total number
of active licenses that class contains.

The Changing Operating Classes
Over the past year the Technician class has increased at an average rate of
13/day.

The Tech Plus class has decreased at an average rate of 27/day.

The Novice class has decreased at an average rate of 9/day.

The General class has increased at an average rate of 7/day.

The Advanced class has decreased at an average rate of 12/day.

The Extra class has increased at an average rate of 6/day.

Club Stations have increased at an average rate of 1/day.

Ace,

The numbers you posted above are derived from the
hamdata.com website. Nothing wrong with that, of course,
but those numbers include licenses that are expired but
in the grace period.

The numbers I post are current/unexpired licenses. Here's a
comparison of the 361 days between April 2, 2006 and March 29,
2007, using the numbers of current, unexpired licenses
held by individuals on those dates:

(first number is April 2, 2006, second is March 29, 2007
Per-day changes are rounded to the nearest integer)

Novice: 25614 \ 22473 decrease of 3141 (~9 per day)
Technician: 278860 \ 288960 increase of 10100 (~28 per day)
Technician Plus: 40534 \ 29402 decrease of 11132 (~31 per day)
General: 133682 \ 136061 increase of 2379 (~7 per day)
Advanced: 72819 \ 68507 decrease of 4312 (~12 per day)
Extra: 107768 \ 109371 increase of 1603 (~4 per day)

Total all classes: 659107 \ 654774 decrease of 4333 (~12 per day)

73 de Jim, N2EY

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In . com "AF6AY" writes:

[...]

Curiously, there has been a growth of Club licenses
granted in the last year. I would have thought that Club
licenses were relatively static since the overall licensee
totals showed little growth or decline in numbers?

73, Len AF6AY

I agree that this is a very non-intuitive result at first glance. One
reasonable explanation would appear to be that there was a lot of
pent-up demand for club licenses from over the relatively long period of
time during which they were not issued, which was from at least 1978 to
1995. The official FCC answer on the subject of club and special (i.e.,
"Vanity") callsigns during that time was that it was too much of an
administrative burden to grant them. The FCC was also using a
relatively inflexible, legacy Honeywell system to track and issue
amateur radio licenses. Those that held licenses during that time,
licenses that were impact-printed on smudgy carbon "burst" forms, might
note that they were only issued one day a week (Thursday, I believe).
Existing club licenses could be renewed, but if they expired and passed
out of their grace period without renewal, they could not be reissued.
I understand that the grandfathered club licenses were tracked by the
FCC manually in an index card catalog.

I can attest personally to the fact that when members of the local
amateur radio and USAF veterans' communities noticed that the FCC was
going to allow club licenses and vanity callsigns again, they jumped at
the chance to recover a couple of them that had expired many years ago.
This included the base MARS/military-recreation station at Offutt Air
Force Base, K0AIR, and the personal Nebraska callsign of General Curtis
LeMay when he was the Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Air Command,
K0GRL. The club that was formed to hold these callsigns, and use them
for special events like Veteran's Day/General LeMay's birthday, has a
home page at:

http://www.sacmarc.org

Other local clubs availed themselves of the opportunity to obtain
special, distinctive callsigns for repeaters, contest stations, to honor
deceased members who made significant contributions to the
hobby/service, and the like. I think that the FCC has struck an
appropriate balance between allowing a reasonable number of such club
callsigns for legitimate use (such as to identify different stations or
operational missions and resources) on one hand, versus discouraging
callsign hoarding/banking on the other. I feel that it is appropriate
to recover distinctive callsigns to honor deceased amateurs who made
significant contributions to the hobby/service, and place them in
special trust/usage. As long as it doesn't degrade to the point that
huge swaths of desirable callsigns are taken out of use for other
amateurs. I recall a "Tank McNamara" comic strip some years back with
two team managers looking out over the starting lineup of a baseball
game. One says to the other something like, "Maybe we should stop
retiring numbers," as all of the players had increasingly lengthy, and
tiny, numbers on the backs of their uniforms.

- --
73, Paul W. Schleck, K3FU

http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
Finger for PGP Public Key










-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (SunOS)

iD8DBQFGETG/6Pj0az779o4RAiVXAKCrlovWcjUiSM0BoQckrt2/5/CaqQCaA3JD
kJYc9DXgHed2iFvsRPMfKR8=
=4UVM
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Apr 2, 10:21�am, Paul W. Schleck " wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

In . com "AF6AY" writes:

*[...]

* Curiously, there has been a growth of Club licenses
* granted in the last year. *I would have thought that Club
* licenses were relatively static since the overall licensee
* totals showed little growth or decline in numbers?
* 73, Len *AF6AY

I agree that this is a very non-intuitive result at first glance. *One
reasonable explanation would appear to be that there was a lot of
pent-up demand for club licenses from over the relatively long period of
time during which they were not issued, which was from at least 1978 to
1995. *The official FCC answer on the subject of club and special (i.e.,
"Vanity") callsigns during that time was that it was too much of an
administrative burden to grant them. *The FCC was also using a
relatively inflexible, legacy Honeywell system to track and issue
amateur radio licenses. *Those that held licenses during that time,
licenses that were impact-printed on smudgy carbon "burst" forms, might
note that they were only issued one day a week (Thursday, I believe).
Existing club licenses could be renewed, but if they expired and passed
out of their grace period without renewal, they could not be reissued.
I understand that the grandfathered club licenses were tracked by the
FCC manually in an index card catalog.

The period between 1995 and 2007 is twelve years.

In that interim there have been a number of abuses of the Vanity
callsign system, most notably by Roy Tucker of southern
California who once had the Tucker family holding 41 callsigns,
all at the same street-city address. That is now down to a mere
twenty or so. :-)

History of the Vanity callsign system noted, the FCC now has a
nice page on its website for applications of Vanity callsigns as
well
as renewals and other administrative changes. The FCC will
immediately accept and process credit card fees for a Vanity
call ($20.80) through another govenment agency link but they
also explain that "it may take weeks to fully process [them]."

73, Len AF6AY