The ARRL recently posted the news item “FCC Morse, restructuring proposals could hit the street by mid-year.” The report notes that the FCC will probably issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) addressing the Morse requirement and other restructuring issues sometime in the second half of this year. Another round of public comments would follow this action, and that it could possibly be early 2007 before these rules go into effect.
The upshot of all this is that if you’re waiting for the FCC to drop the code requirement to upgrade to General, don’t run out and buy that HF transceiver just yet. It could be up to two years before the rules change. Do you really want to wait two years? Wouldn’t it just be easier to learn the code?