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From: Leo on Mon, Feb 26 2007 3:38 pm
wrote: From: Leo on Sun, Feb 25 2007 10:57 am On Tue, 13 Feb 2007 22:15:28 -0500, Leo wrote: On 13 Feb 2007 16:43:31 -0800, wrote: On Feb 13, 5:13?pm, Leo wrote: On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:12:59 -0500, Leo wrote: On 8 Feb 2007 18:01:57 -0800, wrote: The Technician class is *not* now bigger than all other US license classes combined. And if present trends continue, it never will be. Perhaps! Perhaps not. Hmmm.....no rebuttal comments regarding the points listed above for 12 days now. Hope you enjoyed the math lesson - we'll do it again soon! I don't think he did...probably because he can't control the subject being argued, especially the comparisons he insists on using. :-) Good point! ![]() CONTROL is everything in this medium. :-) Miccolis has the annoying habit of trying to solidify his comparisons of His making, then saying another's comparison are "wrong" or "mistaken" or some such. For example, he keeps OMITTING all USA licensees from totals if they are in the US 2-year grace period. Since he hasn't presented HOW he determines this (it can be done from FCC database data fields), everyone has to take his data on face value. I mean how many have the time and high-speed connections to grab a daily 80 MB+ data file and sort it? :-) Now, on this "grace period:" Contrary to implied belief, the FCC still considers those licensees to be licensees. Why would they hold the callsigns in abbeyance until they are renewed? US Regulations state that licensees cannot operate when in the grace period until renewed, but they are still "hams" other- wise. Over a long period of licensing, one can simply take 5/6th of the totals for a class and say those are "in the grace period" and not be far off the actual, exact, uber-pedantic grace period. At present data on the 25th, the total of no-code-test Techs to Tech-Plus is 352,210 (40,262 Tech Plus). The number of INDIVIDUAL licensees (less Club calls) on the 25th is 711,390. Combined, Tech and Tech-Plus are 49.51% of the total. Yes, that is NOT 50.01% but it is so damn close to 50% that only an unreasonable pedant would make a case for it "not being larger!" :-) Agreed. In looking at the www.hamdata.com figures by class for 26th February and comparing it with the 22nd (day before the sky fell on morsemen), there's the barest smidgen of a trend. Overall US individual licensee totals fell by 44 (711,432 minus 711,388). Technician class (the evil no-code-test one that is 'supposed' to be causing all the drop-outs) went from 311,851 on the 22nd to 311,966 on the 26th. That's a gain of 115! Except for that short one-day drop (24th to 25th) of 30, no-code-test Technician class has been steadily INCREASING. Extras went from 111,464 on the 22nd to 111,500 on the 26th, a gain of 36 and Generals went from 142,031 on the 22nd to 142,051 on the 26th, another gain, of 20. ALL the other classes showed losses. By the way, the combined Tech and Tech-Plus classes (352,199) now make up 49.51% of all USA individual amateur radio licensees. Slow but inexorable growth trend (albeit very small) despite Tech-Plus losses of 147 from 22nd to 26th. There's a higher-than-even probability that many Tech-Plusses upgraded to other classes since the 22nd. Just the same, individual licensee grand-sum total shows a small decrease in just five days. Regardless of the source of the numbers, the results would be more believable if the calculations were shown for each category.....otherwise, the numbers are just that - numbers. Numbers which can be tailored to support one's own agenda, should they wish to do so.... ![]() Plus, our resident - ahem - statistician does not have much of a track record here in the rigorous calculations area......lol ![]() Well, let's just say that NASA won't be consulting him anytime soon to help plot Earth to Moon or Earth to Mars space trips... :-) Agreed. Refer to the 'average distance to the Moon' that I called him on......I presented detailed reasoning to show his error - he simply restated his position over and over, as if doing do made it correct! Looks like a familiar pattern. VERY - unfortunately - familiar pattern. :-( There appears to be a belief amongst some here that the removal of code testing will open the floodgates, resulting in an influx of new hobbyists who saw code as a barrier, and up to now stayed out of Amateur Radio. That's the PRO-code-testing rationale. It is wrong, of course, but if that is repeated often enough by lots of morsemen, it will become "CW" (Conventional Wisdom). I don't believe that this is likely to happen. Of course, there are some who may have been held back by Morse code testing alone (which may have been true in 1960, but not in communications rich 2007) - but I'd say that the vast majority of people interested in becoming hams have already done so. I agree with you there. But it's almost impossible to convince the olde-tymers that. :-( Having observed US amateur radio since the late 1940s until now, the amount of "real" publicity given about amateur radio OUTSIDE of the amateur radio community is limited to the occasional "filler" piece in the newspapers on weekends or slow news days. It is a quaint hobby thing done by either kids or retirees from the general newspaper stories. That overlooks some REAL efforts done by experimenters (such as a home-made, precision Vector Network Analyzer) or the emergency communicators (a group in Arizona having modified RVs ready-to-roll in very quick notice). The USA ARRL has simply failed to get any substantive network and newspaper attention about amateur radio for YEARS. If they do, it will prominently feature 'officers' of the League...which is itself indicative of what They seem to have wanted all along. :-( It is nice that respected newsman Walter Cronkhite has narrated a special video. Big problem is that such a video is USELESS to the purpose of attracting anyone in the general public to ham radio if it airs in the wee small hours of morning or on "community channel" cable. Considering the paradoxical manner in which Morse code testing was dropped in the US, new wannabe hams still have the hurdle of two exams to pass before they hit the General level and have significant access to the HF voice subbands. The Tech and Tech Plus licensees gained very little when code was dropped - a small voice allotment on 10m (not worth the expense of setting up an HF station for...), and (here's the paradox...) access to three HF CW subbands, which are useless to them without the ability to use Morse code! I know, but *I* wasn't going to fight that after trying to drop code testing for over 15 years... So, the newbies get some (however slight) "action space" for "CW"...which is really a sop or compromise to the stridency of olde-tyme hamme morsemen. Maybe some try it out and do it for a while. It's a safe bet that the 'establishment' (hard-core morsemen) aren't going to be kind to them. :-( For this reason alone, I would expect to see a decrease in the Tech categories, and a proportionate increase in the General category (and to a lesser degree, Extra), representing the Techs who wish to take advantage of the Morse-free HF access at that level. I disagree a bit based on my observations in one corner of a large urban area of the southwestern USA. The interest of newbies here seems to be for the Technician class. Given an urban population of roughly 8 million in a 120 by 60 mile area, VHF and up works out very well for contacts that they can actually meet in-person. Of course, the Greater L.A. Area is one where the auto rules what happens and that may not apply to other USA locations. Again, by direct observation, Techs seem to be younger in age than the other classes (discounting Novice) and prefer the company of those nearer their own age. One could see the same thing two decades ago on the "social" BBSs (those that had regular in-person gatherings of members). The "age" group is NOT necessarily just chronological...those who are bright, lively, alert, flexible with differing mores and opinions have a "younger" mental age. The stodgy olde-tymer will take umbrage to that since they maintain They are bright, lively, etc., but they overlook the fact that They are holding to thoughts of a bygone era, three to four decades ago when They were chronologically young. Social mores CHANGE and They can't always adapt to that, preferring the company of those with like minds (or 'hive minds'). After this correction, it should level off - then it's dead guys and decreases for the forseeable future, unless the younger members of society get r-e-a-l-l-y bored with the Internet, cellphones, text messaging and IM! I agree with the "dead guys and decreases." I don't quite agree with the others. Yes, the Internet and cell phone has become the new phenomenon of NOW. Folks of now ARE affluent enough to afford cell phones and unlimited-service 'Net accounts. NOW is NOT the wind-coils-on-round-oatmeal-containers style of pre- WW2 times or futzing with "crystal sets" and pi-net two-tube MOPAs in the "most economical manner." NOW is NOT the 1960s or the 1950s with attendant monetary values. The USA pushed a "radio panic button" with 11m CB back in 1958. A decade later the off-shore makers of inexpensive but fully-functional, all-channel mobile or fixed transceivers for the UNlicensed was the lift- off for communicating. The DESIRE to communicate was always there. The growth of the BBS and BBS networks is a different thing but still indicative of a desire to communicate. That worked until the Internet went public just 16 years ago...competition in means, a way that forced most BBSs to just give up. Cell phones are slightly older but not much...again the DESIRE to communicate is there and evident from supermarkets to sidewalks. Amateur radio CAN help that DESIRE to communicate. But, it will just shoot itself down if it stays mired in what was "gee-whiz technology" four decades ago...or the competition to collect as much wallpaper as possible (which isn't real communication, just an odd contest). Amateur radio just can't get anywhere if all the cheering sections just spend all their time giving each other high-fives on "how good we are" or "we are the pioneers of radio" (very, very past tense). Self- praise is something done here in moom pitchas (see Sunday's Oscar Awards). The difference is that the motion picture industry THRIVES on publicity; amateur radio publicity outside of itself is almost nil. 73, LA |