New Rules Bring New Hams

The FCC’s decision to drop Morse code tests from all classes of amateur licenses is apparently prompting thousands of people to join the amateur service for the first time, even though there has been no code test for the Technician license since 1991. The ARRL reports a huge upsurge in the number of new Technician Class licensees — sometimes 60 or 70 from a single test session, according to the ARRL Letter, with large numbers of upgrades as well. The number of exam session is way up as well. The ARRL VEC, which normally sponsors about 450 test sessions a month around the U.S., reported nearly 800 sessions had been scheduled for March, with another 600 on tap for April. And, according to VEC Manager Maria Somma, AB1FM, “it doesn’t look like test session activity will be slowing down anytime soon.”

This entry was posted on March 26, 2007 at 11:28 am and is filed under CQ News Service. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.