In article , Jason Hsu wrote:
What do you think of my idea? (I'm taking bets on how many people
flame my idea.) While I applaud the ARRL for proposing a compromise,
I think the proposal goes too far in some areas and not far enough in
others. My proposal:
1. Keep the Technician class. No-Code Technicians get free upgrades
to Tech Plus privileges instead of General privileges.

Agreed.


2. Eliminate the 5 wpm exam completely. The General license would
STILL require the General written exam but NOT the Morse Code exam.
The Amateur Extra license would STILL require the Amateur Extra
written exam but not the Morse Code exam. There is a pragmatic as
well as philosophical reason to eliminate the Morse Code testing
requirement: no more need to keep track of which Technicians (and new
Generals) passed the 5 wpm exam and which ones did not. (Yes, this is
essentially what No Code International proposes.)

Agree here also.


3. Keep the current phone bands in place as an incentive to use and
develop narrowband modes like CW, PSK-31, etc.

Interesting, but I would prefer to split up the bandplans based on actual
bandwidth of the mode in question.


4. If keeping Advanced licenses in the database is too much work,
then give Advanced licensees a free upgrade to Amateur Extra.

Should not be a real problem to keep Advanced holders in the database.
It would probably be more difficult to upgrade them to Extra. The easiest
thing to do would be to make the Advanced and Extra priveleges the same --
no database changes that way, only paperwork changes.


5. Do NOT reduce Novice privileges. (The ARRL proposal reduces their
allowed power output and eliminates their 23 cm privileges.) If
keeping Novice licenses in the database is too much work for the FCC,
then give all Novices a free upgrade to my proposed new Technician
class (Tech Plus).

See above, probably easier to equate Novice, Technician and Tech-Plus
priveleges.


6. If the entry-level license has too few HF privileges, then expand
HF privileges for the new Technician class rather than give all
Technicians a free upgrade to General.

Agreed, there should be no automatic upgrades, expansion of priveleges would
be my prefered method.

Alex / AB2RC