More than a year after it first proposed reducing the number of amateur license classes and asked hams for input on code speed requirements, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) handed down its restructuring decision on the final business day of 1999. Here is a summary of changes, which are effective as of April 15, 2000:

• There will be only three license classes, Technician, General, and Amateur Extra, with a single written exam element for each grade of license.
  
  
• There will be only one code exam -- at 5 words per minute (wpm) -- for licenses with HF privileges (General and Extra).
  
  
• No new Novice, Tech-Plus, or Advanced Class licenses will be issued after April 14. However, hams who now hold these licenses will retain all of their current operating privileges, and will be able to modify &/or renew their licenses indefinitely. Tech-Plus hams will be renewed as Technicians, but will retain their HF operating privileges.
  
  
• There will be no "refarming" of the ham bands as proposed by the ARRL. This means that current Novice and Advanced Class subbands will remain as they are, so there will be no expansion of frequency privileges for any ham without passing an upgrade exam or showing credit for all necessary exam elements (more on this later). There will also be no changes in the callsign groups.
  
  
• There will be no automatic upgrades, even for hams who qualify based on past credit. Even if no additional exams are required, a ham will have to apply for an upgrade at a VE (Volunteer Examination) session.
  
  
• There will be only three written exam elements, one for each new class of license. Decisions on structuring the new exam elements will be made by the Volunteer Examiner Coordinators' Question Pool Committee (QPC), which will be given even greater authority in designing and administering amateur exams.
  
  
• The much-abused disability waiver for 13- and 20-wpm code tests is eliminated (since there will no longer be any 13- or 20-wpm code tests, and their never was one for the 5-wpm code test).
  

New Morse Testing Standards
NCVEC advances revised Morse testing standards

The National Conference of Volunteer Examiner Coordinators has voted to set up revised standards for the administration of Morse code examinations in the US.

Under the revised standards, examinees would have to show 25 character-count solid copy on test sheets or successfully answer seven out of ten questions of a fill-in-the-blank quiz on the sent text. The plan would bar multiple choice tests for Morse code testing.

Morse examinations would specify use of a Farnsworth  "character speed" in the range of 13 to 15 WPM.  Morse code audio pitch would have to be between 700 and 1000 Hz. Standard 5 WPM tests with 5 WPM character speed could be administered only as a special accommodation.

The new Morse testing standards are to be in effect by next July 1, but VECs may implement them sooner.

The NCVEC vote came July 21, 2000 during a meeting of VECs in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

The following sites will allow you to take a practice exam for the Technician, General or Extra Class License. These are using the questions from the new April 15, 2000 question pools.

Clicktron / QRZ Practice Ham Exams

eHam.net Practice Ham Exams

     

Sometimes there is confusion between GMT, UTC and ZTIME. As utilized, these time designators all mean the same thing. It is based on the time at Greenwich, England (hence GMT - Greenwich Mean Time). You may see references such as 1200 GMT, 1200 UTC or 12Z. These are all the same time.

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