I read in our web story on the NCVEC meeting the following discouraging
paragraph:

"The FCC's Dorothy Conway spelled out some upcoming new procedures affecting
new Amateur Radio applicants as well as VECs. Starting in September, she
said, applicants will have to supply a Commission Registration System
(CORES) password on their applications to a VEC before obtaining an FCC
Registration Number (FRN). Conway, who's associate chief of Outreach
Spectrum Management and Resource Technology Division in WTB, said the
Commission is implementing the new policy because it wants to head off
telephone calls from new licensees seeking their CORES passwords to file for
vanity call signs. Typically, it has taken about three weeks for the FCC to
mail passwords to new licensees."

If you register in CORES on line, you get your FRN immediately and you'll
have the password in hand because you create it when you register. If you
are not on the Internet and must register by U.S. mail, that's another
story. All this will be so much fun for VE team captains to explain to
wanna-be hams.

I am thinking about the 20 Boy Scouts I helped test last month at Radio
Camp. Camp lasts one week. There is no Internet accces at the camp, so in
the future it will be difficult to get all the children registered in CORES
before exams are given on the last day of camp. One of the instructors will
have to gather all the kids' data, register the children himself on line
from his home, and bring the passwords to the kids back at camp to put on
their 605's. All this is so some drones at Gettysburg won't have to answer
the phone as much. More time to play FreeCell??

Irritated? You bet I am. If there are more impediments the FCC can throw in
the road to discourage people from becoming radio amateurs, I hope they
don't find out. They are doing way too well as it is.

73 - Kay N3KN