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Old 05-26-2014, 11:15 PM   #1
electricflyer
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Default A great test session today.

Another successful test session on Monday (Memorial Day). We had 8 people to come for testing and everyone passed. 2 were upgrades from General to Amateur Extra, 1 passed Technician and General, and the other 5 passed the Technician exam.

There are nearly at 780,000 hams now. Only about 150 short of that number. Of that number about half are Technicians. There is still one license holder that is a Tech Plus. When that license comes up for renewal it will be automatically converted to Technician.

Anyway, welcome to 6 new hams and congratulations to the 2 new Extras.

I checked the number of exams I have conducted and out of the 939 ARRL VE's in Georgia I am only 21 from the top number. I am also a VE for CAVEC and W5YI and those exams don't count in the total number of exams I was involved with. I will be assisting at the CAVEC test session at the Hamfest in Marietta, GA on June 7th. We enjoy the volunteer work we do with ham radio. I also assist with teaching license classes and I am now signed up to be a volunteer radio operator at the Tanner Regional Hospital in Carrollton, GA in association with ARES.

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Old 05-27-2014, 12:48 AM   #2
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Originally Posted by electricflyer View Post
Another successful test session on Monday (Memorial Day). We had 8 people to come for testing and everyone passed. 2 were upgrades from General to Amateur Extra, 1 passed Technician and General, and the other 5 passed the Technician exam.

There are nearly at 780,000 hams now. Only about 150 short of that number. Of that number about half are Technicians. There is still one license holder that is a Tech Plus. When that license comes up for renewal it will be automatically converted to Technician.

Anyway, welcome to 6 new hams and congratulations to the 2 new Extras.

I checked the number of exams I have conducted and out of the 939 ARRL VE's in Georgia I am only 21 from the top number. I am also a VE for CAVEC and W5YI and those exams don't count in the total number of exams I was involved with. I will be assisting at the CAVEC test session at the Hamfest in Marietta, GA on June 7th. We enjoy the volunteer work we do with ham radio. I also assist with teaching license classes and I am now signed up to be a volunteer radio operator at the Tanner Regional Hospital in Carrollton, GA in association with ARES.

Marv
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Well Marv,

Thank you for your service to the amateur radio community!

Very appreciated for all of the time and effort put forth to grow this great hobby of ours .
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Old 05-27-2014, 09:21 AM   #3
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There are two definitions of "A great test session".. 8 out of 8 is one (or as happened locally 15 out of 16)

And the other one is at least 1 out of xx provided you are the "1".

Thus, my last test session was great as well.. cause out of 50 questions (Extra)...

Well, I was the first in the room to complete the test (Traditional) and thus I watched them check it.. The first checker put two marks on the form (I assume those were querstions I got wrong) the others noded, all 3 signed or initialed, and passed to the head VE who handed me my upgrade papers.

Not bad, considering the class I was taking was only 2/3 completed. (Actually, there were only a couple issues I had problem with and they were covered in the last half of the first third so I was good to test 2 weeks into the six week class.. VERY good instructor).
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Old 05-27-2014, 09:24 AM   #4
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Cool, Marv. But are there too many hams now? Food for thought.
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Old 05-27-2014, 12:04 PM   #5
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John, glad to see you made Extra. Always room for one more. I think ham radio is a lot more diversified than it was 40-50 years ago. We didn't have the miniaturized equipment and of course SSB was just an idea and digital modes were non existent. I was going to get my license 50 years ago but got married and was distracted. Father-in-law (SK) got his ticket in 1947 and that got me interested and learned code and studied the handbook. Didn't have license manuals back then. Got ready to get the Novice license and backed out. I got back on it when my oldest son went to work for ICOM as a regional sales manager and haven't looked back.
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Old 05-28-2014, 05:18 AM   #6
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Carl... I do not think there can be too many hams.. There can, however, be too many LIDS, but that's another matter.

Flyer, I got my Novice and Tech in 1968 and even back then there were a few SSB rigs.. The club I belonged to had two stations, One was all Heatkit Indians, and the other was Drake. (Two different cities) both nice stations.

Finally did the paper upgrade to General and then wrote the Extra exam in 2006.

It is nice having the Extra.. I do not normally use the extra only parts of the band, but well,,, With the Extra I do not have to worry about out of band operation on the TS-2000, It very simply will not do that.
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Old 08-21-2014, 08:58 PM   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by electricflyer View Post
Another successful test session on Monday (Memorial Day). We had 8 people to come for testing and everyone passed. 2 were upgrades from General to Amateur Extra, 1 passed Technician and General, and the other 5 passed the Technician exam.

There are nearly at 780,000 hams now. Only about 150 short of that number. Of that number about half are Technicians. There is still one license holder that is a Tech Plus. When that license comes up for renewal it will be automatically converted to Technician.

Anyway, welcome to 6 new hams and congratulations to the 2 new Extras.

I checked the number of exams I have conducted and out of the 939 ARRL VE's in Georgia I am only 21 from the top number. I am also a VE for CAVEC and W5YI and those exams don't count in the total number of exams I was involved with. I will be assisting at the CAVEC test session at the Hamfest in Marietta, GA on June 7th. We enjoy the volunteer work we do with ham radio. I also assist with teaching license classes and I am now signed up to be a volunteer radio operator at the Tanner Regional Hospital in Carrollton, GA in association with ARES.

Marv
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Well Marv, the ARRL says that some of those call signs belongs to clubs - about 20,000 of them - more or less.
Some of those call signs belongs to contest stations - are only used for contests - about another 5000 or so.

About 75,000 of those call signs are probably dead, but their family did not understand how to turn in their license and proof of death - death certificate or news paper clipping.

Another 100,000 are hams by license only, they got a license, did not know what to do with it. Never bought a radio or got on the air. When 10 years is up, they just let their license lapse and then it is removed from the data base.

Another 100,000 were hams, but dad or Uncle Joe died, or the one person that they talked to, so they just let their license go until finally it expires.

That subtracts almost 300,000 licenses from the active pool of operators.
Divide by .5 and 150,000 operators are just Technicians, 75,000 are generals and another 75000 is Amateur Extra's.

A Technician Plus license holder, already passed the Element 2 - to get a General Class License, just did not pass the code.
The date - when he got his license and upgrade would determine if he would be grandfathered in as a General or moved back to Technician.

Novices are allowed to hold their novice license and Advanced are allowed to keep their advanced license.

No class of license was ever designed to be a stopping place.
It would stand to reason that anyone that just got a Technician Class License and never upgraded is either too stupid to upgrade or too lazy and they really are not of any benefit to the amateur radio community.

We had a bunch of guys here that bought their license.
They never learned the rules and they never operated outside of 10 meters.
Some were very good operators, while others just used their license as a permit to talk on the amateur radio frequencies - like a telephone.

They basically left CB radio - because the CB had too much noise and they couldn't sit there for an hour and talk without interference.
They free banded for a while, until they were more afraid of getting caught then they were of anything else.

They already had the illegal 10 meter equipment, so they just went out and got the license and migrated to Two Meters FM Simplex - where no one could throw them off a frequency and where they believed that no one could hear them - unless they knew which frequency this group operated on.

The local 146.565 simplex is almost as bad as the K6MWT repeater in Los Angeles.
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Old 08-22-2014, 10:56 AM   #8
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My bad, I should have said there are nearly 780,000 active licenses issued for whatever purpose. Good to know all about the different licenses though.
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