Yesterday, one of the hams I follow on Twitter posted a link to FCC Public Notice DA-21-9, titled, “WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU SEEKS INPUT ON EXPANDING THE NUMBER OF AMATEUR OPERATOR LICENSE VOLUNTEER EXAMINER COORDINATORS” (all caps theirs). The first paragraph concludes, “The Bureau seeks to determine whether the existing 14 VECs provide adequate support to volunteer examiners or whether additional VECs are needed.”
After a couple of paragraphs explaining what the Amateur Radio Service is, and the current way in which VECs administer amateur radio license exams, it asks the following questions:
- Are the existing 14 VECs sufficient to coordinate the efforts of volunteer examiners in preparing and administering examinations for amateur radio operator licenses, or are additional VECs needed to support the amateur community?
- What needs are currently being met, and which needs, if any, are currently unmet?
- If the Commission were to allow additional VECs, how many additional VECs are needed to satisfy the existing amateur service operator license examination needs?
- Given VECs use a collaborative process to create the question pool and operating protocols for how volunteer examiners administer exams, would additional VECs enhance or hinder this collaborative process?
- Finally, we seek comment on how increasing the number of VECs will address the unmet needs, if any, of the amateur community, as well as on what obstacles or complications could be created by increasing the number of VECs?
I was honestly quite surprised by all this. I hadn’t heard anything at all about a desire to add more VECs. Anyone know who’s behind this? It seems to me, that even during this pandemic, folks are able to get their licenses easily enough.
I think what the FCC might want to do is to determine how active the current VECs are and set some minimum amount of activity as a requirement for keeping VEC certification. I recently polled some of the VECs for another blog post. Several did not respond at all, while one simply replied that their VEC was no longer really active.
As far as whether or not more VECs would enhance or hinder the question pool process, I don’t think that’s the right question. The NCVEC is in charge of the question pools, and the process is only as collaborative as the Question Pool Committee allows it to be. I don’t think that there being more VECs will make one whit of difference to the question pool process.
Anyway, I’d love to hear what you all think about this, especially if you’ve been involved as a VE at all.
Dave New, N8SBE says
This MAY have come from complaints that there aren’t enough remote testing sessions to meet the demand from ‘shelter in place’ folks that now have found they have some time on their hands, maybe its time to get a license.
They are finding a dearth of sessions that can cater to their needs of safe remote testing, so have petitioned the FCC to ‘solve’ the problem by opening the VEC pool to competition.
Hopefully that competition would get some largely inactive VEC’s off their keester and incentivize them to enact safe remote testing.
Even then, remote testing so far has not had very large bandwidth to do en masse testing.
There is a perceived heavy demand for remote testing that currently isn’t being met.
Dan KB6NU says
I think the key word there is “perceived.” No one in any of my online classes has been unable to schedule an online test. What I’ve just done is to post a sticky item to our club website informing folks looking to take an amateur radio exam to go to https://hamstudy.org/sessions, where they can sign up for online test sessions.
Bob K0NR says
Having more VECs is probably not a bad thing. I do wonder why this popped up at the FCC. Is this the most important regulatory issue in ham radio? Probably not.
Maybe if we have more VECs, we can toss out the existing Technician question pool and start over. It needs a redesign, IMO.
Bob, W6BP says
Before adding more VECs, the FCC should first assess the performance of current VECs. It’s OK if VECs hold a small number of tests if they’re addressing a specific geographic need, but I suspect that some VECs run very few test sessions for no particular reason.
Dan KB6NU says
I agree. I think they should have really spelled out more of what they’re looking for and then grade the existing VECs.
Ria Jairam N2RJ says
From what I was told, the FCC has been getting requests for years from groups who wanted to start their own VEC and who were denied because the FCC said no thanks, we are full. This has been happening since 1984z So now they’ve decided to put it out for public comment. Why exactly now, no idea. Maybe they thought it was time to ask.
Dan KB6NU says
That’s interesting, and I think that some of the less active VECs could be consolidated or dissolved. But, I don’t think that it’s all that hard to arrange an online test session currently. No one has complained to me that they’ve had to wait an inordinate amount of time to take a test. And, sooner or later, we’ll be able to start holding in-person test sessions again.
As Bob, K0NR, points out up above, “Maybe if we have more VECs, we can toss out the existing Technician question pool and start over.” I’m with him that it could use some redesign, but we don’t really need more VECs to do that.