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

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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/
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On Apr 2, 10:21�am, Paul W. Schleck " wrote:
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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

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In .com "AF6AY" writes:

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.

That's true. So, it's probably not the only explanation, especially if
annual growth of club licenses has been increasing recently. In my
opinion, other plausible explanations based on more recent trends could
include:

- More amateurs being aware of the opportunity to establish club
stations (I know there's been recent debate in many forums regarding
how long it takes word of FCC action to trickle down into the general
amateur radio population and become common knowledge. It's probably
not twelve years, but it might not be 30 days, either.)

- Fewer bureaucratic hurdles to obtaining amateur radio licenses in
general, due to a debugged Universal Licensing System, VEC
handling of club licensing applications, and clearer documentation by
the FCC, the ARRL, and other entities regarding how to apply for and
renew licenses

- An aging amateur radio population that desires to establish more
legacies for callsigns held either by clubs or notable individuals

- A fear that another embargo of similar or greater length might happen
in the foreseeable future

- A desire to establish club stations for Elmering/recruiting purposes,
or to give amateurs of modest means or those under antenna
restrictions access to more capable stations at all bands including
HF, especially in light of licensing requirement changes

- Or even just clearer and more permissive feedback from the
FCC concerning clubs obtaining 1 or more callsigns, both by statement,
and by enforcement action, or lack thereof (see link below)

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. :-)

In addition to flexing some welcome enforcement muscle against obvious
abusers like the Tuckers, the FCC was also kind enough to make a
clarification of policy about 8 years ago:

http://www.arrl.org/arrlletter/99/0709/#hollingsworth

so club license applicants may no longer feel that they would be making
themselves the "guinea pig" or "test case."

- --
73, Paul W. Schleck, K3FU

http://www.novia.net/~pschleck/
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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