After more than two years of work, the ARRL’s Entry-Level Licensing Committee made its recommendation to the ARRL Board, and on February 28, 2108, the ARRL submitted a formal Petition for Rulemaking. In a nutshell, the proposal asks the FCC to give Techs:
- phone privileges at 3.900 to 4.000 MHz, 7.225 to 7.300 MHz, and 21.350 to 21.450 MHz.
- RTTY and digital privileges in current Technician allocations on 80, 40, 15, and 10 meters.
Now, the FCC is asking for comments on this proposal, which has the official designation RM-11828. You can file your comment by going to the FCC website.
I’m not against this proposal, but personally, I don’t think that this proposal is going to have the effect that the ARRL is hoping for. In the news story announcing the call for comments, the ARRL writes:
Now numbering some 384,500, Technician licensees comprise more than half of the US Amateur Radio population. ARRL stressed in its petition the urgency of making the license more attractive to newcomers, in part to improve upon science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, “that inescapably accompanies a healthy, growing Amateur Radio Service.”
Doesn’t this seem contradictory? The Tech license is already the most popular category of license. How is giving Techs more HF privileges going to make it more popular? And, with HF phone and digital privileges, won’t fewer Techs feel the need to upgrade?
Bruce, K1BG, has done some wonderful research on entry-level licensing, and he recently gave a presentation on this topic to ARROW, our club here in Ann Arbor. You can see the slides from his presentation on the ARROW website.
If you ask me, the conclusion to be drawn from this research is that what we need is a new version of the Novice license, not a Tech license with more privileges. Take a look at the slide, “What Worked, What Didn’t?” in K1BG’s presentation. It seems to me that what we’re getting with this latest proposal is more of what didn’t work than what did work.
I guess a new Novice license is not in the cards, though. I’ve got some half-baked ideas on this subject. (When don’t I, right?) I’ll be writing some more about this in the future.