N2EY wrote:

In article , Mike Coslo writes:


N2EY wrote:

These are the number of unexpired FCC ARS
licenses held by individuals on the dates listed:

snip

As of September 30, 2003:

Novice - 33,034 (decrease of 16,295)

snip

This may be hard to quantify, Jim, but is there any data or even
educated guessing about how many Novices are still actually active?


Not that I know of, Mike.

Let's look at how the three license classes that are closed to new entries have
declined in numbers:

Novice is now ~67% of where it was May 14, 2000
Advanced is now ~83% of where it was May 14, 2000
Tech Plus is now ~50% of where it was May 14, 2000

Of course the Tech Plus will decline the fastest because all Tech Pluses are
being renewed as Techs.

--

But if you want some interesting numbers, note that we are now down below
684,000, after peaking around 687,000. Extra and General continue to grow, and
Advanced is declining slowly. What gives?

One clue is to look at the AH0A site

http://www.ah0a.org

and look at the "new licenses" numbers. For some reason, the number of new
Technicians has dropped significantly in the past 2-3 months. The number of new
Generals and Extras continues at the same rate as before, so it's not due to an
FCC paper backup or seasonal variation.

So why the sudden dropoff in new Techs?

One definite possibility is the new Technician Q&A pool, which was introduced
on July 15th. The new pool has with 511 questions, while the old one had only
384 questions.

Coupled with many prospective technicians possibly holding out until
they might not have to take a Morse code test?


Prior to the new pool, the average number of new Techs was about 1700 a month.
Since then, it has dropped to less than 1000 per month.

Maybe this is just a temporary thing - or maybe it isn't. The code test cannot
be blamed for the drop because it's not a part of the Tech license
requirements.

Oh, I'll bet some try to blame it on that! 8^)