[UK-CONTEST] UK-Contest Digest, Vol 116, Issue 44

[Dave Sergeant]

But you must also take into account the new lifetime licence introduced 
around 2007. In the past those who lost interest or became silent key 
would not renew the following year, so there was a natural 'churn' 
rate. Nowadays a licence remains valid for five years, and unless those 
people (or their families) take steps to actually cancel their licence 
it will remain on the database until it drops out after that five 
years. I imagine there is very much more dead wood there than there 
used to be under the old licence regime and the 2-3k increase per year 
pretty well matches just new licences issued with no churn.

73 Dave G3YMC

On 31 Aug 2012 at 17:07, G0RPM wrote:

> When considering whether the numbers of licensed amateurs are growing or
> declining, surely it's more important to compare the numbers year on
> year? The fact that the absolute numbers include SKs and "extra"
> callsigns is that important, because this will be the case in each of
> the last few years. Therefore, the numbers do look to me as if they are
> improving.
> 


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