Klystron turned on his beam supply Wed, 27 Feb 2008
13:14:52 EST:

AF6AY wrote:
[...]

There isn't any sampling or 'plus or minus percentage' in
regard to the FCC license class information in its database
files. It isn't a result of polling of any kind. It is data
direct from the only agency that grants amateur radio
licenses in the USA. Totals are what they are.

You missed my point.

Not quite, :-), I was replying to Mike Coslo. :-)

The figures for new licenses and expired
licenses are, no doubt, perfectly accurate. However, those quantities
may be eclipsed by two other variables that we cannot quantify:

1) The number of hams who have died but have not yet been dropped from
the rolls because the FCC does not know that they are dead

2) The number of hams who have stopped turning on their radios

The delay of 'knowing who died' in regards to RADIO AMATEUR
licensees is only two years...the grace period. After that
and no renewal, the license expires. LICENSE expiration is
a known as far as the FCC database is concerned.

Since amateur radio is a HOBBY, not a profession, there's NO
requirement that anyone 'report in' on someone's condition.
Some become disenchanted with the activity and just quit or
have too many other activities to continue or might be laid
up with some kind of illness. It was never a requirement to
continue being an amateur radio licensee forever once granted
a license...no more so than being interested in radio long
ago was a mandate to get an amateur radio license. :-)

In my opinion, the granted license totals - even if holding
steady despite general population increases - serves as an
indicator in the USA that the amateur radio service will
continue among all the other radio services here for the
near future.

So, the licensee totals have dropped 2% in about 4 1/2 years
since mid-2003. The last year has seen a 0.15% increase in
totals, a rather insignificant gain, but a gain nonetheless.

Many years ago at a small microwave company, all of us were
curious at the absence of one technician who just didn't
show up for work. The small company, busy at keeping afloat,
didn't investigate until two months had passed. Turned out
the guy just got tired of what he was doing and 'quit'
without notifying anyone. Later, at a larger corporation,
we noticed that one engineer didn't show up for two weeks.
Corporate personnel department was notified he'd been
killed in an automobile accident, his family too involved
with that tragedy to notify his employer. There's many
reasons why someone stops doing what they were doing besides
such extremes.

73, Len AF6AY

"AF6AY" wrote in message
...
[snip]


The delay of 'knowing who died' in regards to RADIO AMATEUR
licensees is only two years...the grace period. After that
and no renewal, the license expires. LICENSE expiration is
a known as far as the FCC database is concerned.


Actually if a person died the day they received their license, it could be
12 years before it showed up not two if no one bothers to report it.

Dee, N8UZE

Dee Flint wrote:


Actually if a person died the day they received their license, it could be
12 years before it showed up not two if no one bothers to report it.

Now that would be sad! :^(

- 73 de Mike N3LI -

"Dee Flint" wrote:
"AF6AY" wrote in message
[snip]

The delay of 'knowing who died' in regards to RADIO AMATEUR
licensees is only two years...the grace period. After that
and no renewal, the license expires. LICENSE expiration is
a known as far as the FCC database is concerned.


Actually if a person died the day they received their license, it could be
12 years before it showed up not two if no one bothers to report it.



Dee is correct. Some hams may die with 10 years left on their
licenses. For others, 9 years may remain. For still others, 8 years may
remain (and so on). For the mathematically inclined, the "expected
value" equals the sum of [i as i goes from 0 days to 3652 days] divided
by 3652 days (the number of days in 10 years, including 2 leap years).
The result will be in days, so divide by 365 to get years (the answer is
5 years). Add a 2 year grace period and the AVERAGE ham will remain on
the rolls for seven years after his death.
When you consider the age demographics of ham radio, standard
actuarial tables may lead you to conclude that we are probably in the
middle of a large die off. My guess is that the number of dead hams
still on the books is far greater then the thousand or so net gain that
comes from simply subtracting expired licenses from new license grants.
Then there is the matter of hams who no longer turn on their radios,
whose number is unknowable.

--
Klystron

On Feb 27, 9:23 pm, "Dee Flint" wrote:

Actually if a person died the day they received their license, it could be

12 years before it showed up not two if no one bothers to report it.

As N3LI wrote, that would be sad!

However, when it showed up in the totals is a matter of which totals
you use.

If you use numbers that include the entire FCC database, such as
hamdata.com, you get both unexpired, current licenses and expired-but-
in-the-grace-period licenses, and it takes 12 years before an
unreported death shows up.

But if you use numbers that include only the unexpired, current
licenses, such as ARRL and AH0A, it takes 10 years before an
unreported death shows up.

Note that the terms "expire" and "expiration" refer to the end of the
10 year license term, and do not include the grace period. That's not
my definition, it's FCC's definition. Hamdata.com uses the term "no
longer hams" to indicate licenses which have reached the end of the
grace period without being renewed.

Of course in real life there are several factors which complicate the
issue and make simple conjectures inaccurate:

1) An unknown number of deaths *are* reported to FCC by family
members. Often this is done so the SK's callsign can be transferred to
another amateur in the family, or a club.

2) An unknown number of amateurs renew in the grace period.

3) Not all licenses which expire are the result of death. It is not
unknown for a licensed amateur to lose interest and let the license
not only expire but run past the end of the grace period. Years later,
the ex-ham's interest is revitalized and s/he gets a new license. This
was probably more common in the days of 5 year licenses but one still
encounters recent "retread" hams today.

73 de Jim, N2EY