[BC] Wham, Bam ... thank you Ham

[Broadcast List USER]

As I wrote, and it was accurate, there is no more Advanced Class  
testing, nor are there any NEW Advanced class licenses.

Existing Advanced Class operating licenses stay, but there are no new  
ones.

At the Troodwood Hamvention (near Dayton) there were a lot of angry  
Advanced Class hams who thought the FCC should upgrade them to Extra  
with no test.  It made no sense to me.

At the FCC Forum one of the angry Advanced hams spoke up, and "what's  
his face"  (sorry I don't recall the guy's name) from the FCC shot him  
down.  The new folks are no Riley Hollingsworth in presentation, but  
the woman in charge (I don't recall her name either) seems to have a  
grip on the real problem children, and problem spots, and intends to  
fine them into doing the right thing.

The bad news was that we hit a peak of about 36,000 hams at Trootwood  
when No Code passed.  It has been falling.  They said 18,000 last  
year, and though they said it was up this year, I would estimate  
14,000 for several reasons.  One reason was that the highest ticket  
number called was just over 13,000, and we all know that the tickets  
are not sold from one to the top number -- in other words, there are  
big blocks of unsold tickets throughout the range.  There were "brown"  
tickets too, but the highest brown number I heard called was under  
1,000.

eBay is killing hamfests.

--chiop

On Jun 15, 2009, at 5:17 PM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:

> Message: 6
> From: Rich Wood <richwood at pobox.com>
>
> I have an advanced class license. I think the former classes were
> grandfathered. My last renewal was after the change and it still  
> says Advanced.
>
> I would have thought the dropping of code would outshout the class
> changes. After all, without code you can't be a "real" ham.
>
> Rich
> KF2JO
> ------ At 11:21 PM 6/14/2009, Broadcast List USER wrote: -------
>
>> Advanced Class?  There is no Advanced Class test, nor new licenses.
>>
>> Just ask all those angry hams at the Trootwood Hamvention a few  
>> months
>> ago.