charlesb wrote:
"K0HB" wrote in message
news:b71720b321f483edfb53ce7de21e4078.128005@mygat e.mailgate.org...

Between February 14, 1991 and July 5, 1991, the Commission granted 1,925
new Technician class licenses under the no-code provisions. A couple of
guys have done research which shows that 1,880 of those licenses have
not been renewed or upgraded to a higher class license and are beyond
the two year grace period. That equates to a retention rate of only
2.3%.

Any ideas for increasing the reenlistment rate?

73, de Hans, K0HB


Drop the no-code provision of the Tech license, obviously.

You raise an interesting point Charles. To test the thesis, it would be
nice to have a comparison with the numbers of General and above
licensees from the same period.

With the Technician license being so easy to get, many will take the
test to become a tech as a passing whiiim or fancy. By the time their
license is up for renewal, they are on to something else.


With a 97.7% failure rate, I'd say the new policy is a real loser. - We
better drop it fast and return to what worked better in the past.

I predicted something like this, but not to such a degree, when so many of
the new no-code techs showed a generalized disrespect for the PART97 regs
and the traditions of amateur radio. It was obvious that many of them did
not care at all about the hobby. - They just wanted to know what they could
get out it, what they could get away with. Many of them spent more time
bashing the hobby than anything else. As you have noted, almost none of them
went on to progress and advance themselves as hams.

Personally, I think we will be much better off without most of those "hams",
and that we should avoid policies that increase membership in this way in
the future. We should do as we did in the past, emphasizing quality, not
quantity of our membership.

According to your figures Hans, the no-code tech deal did the hobby more
harm than good.


There are a couple thoughts here.

"Who cares about the retention rate? It's a free country."

Well, how would you like to be a VE, giving up your time and effort on
weekends, only to have almost all that work be fro naught? I would not
want to do this task unless I thought that most of the students were
going to continue.

"We gotta have those numbers".

Your post points out the not-so-subtle difference between quality and
quantity. I'll take a good dedicated ham any day over someone who just
gets their license on a lark.

- Mike KB3EIA -