"N2EY" wrote in message
...
In article et, "Bill
Sohl"
writes:

Also, take a look at the upcoming expirations in the next
6 months...some pretty hefty numbers of hams with
expirations coming up.

All that means is that the dates when today's hams got their licenses
are
not
evenly distributed. Renewal dates are driven by things like rules
changes
and vanity gates.

True, but if the non-renewal rate is the same then I predict a total drop
of
all hams by something on the order of 10K by year's end.

Perhaps. But where are your numbers, Bill? How many licenses were due to
expire
in, say, 2003, vs. how many were renewed? (IOW, what % were renewed?)

I did some quick figuring and found that for 2003, for every 11 license
renewed, 1 was renewed in the grace period.

I expect at least a 10K overall
reduction of licensed hams by end of 2004 based on
SK, lack of interest, etc. based on past renewal rates.

Another WAG, Bill?

SWAG!

How about some numbers to back it up?

The reduction in total licenses has been about 3K since
the high point some months back. As for going into any
real number crunching, I ask what for? You must have
more spare time than I do. My prediction is just that...
a prediction based on what I think has been the renewal
situation and the greater number of expirations that
Speroni shows will happen this year.

Note that even if a license is due to expire in, say, June
2004, there is a 27 month window during which it can be renewed. How do
we
capture all of that?

True, but...
Look at Speroni's grace period renewals for the last few
years. No big numbers there.

For every 11 renewals there was 1 in the grace period.

Note also that despite huge numbers of actual expirations there have not
been
big decreases in license totals.

Will any of the proposed rules changes make a difference in these trends?

If someone is SK, I doubt it.

Cheers,
Bill K2UNK