Quote Originally Posted by n6hcm
i was looking at a wish list for 2010 on eham and, of course, it's littered with "bring back the CW requirement" and "Testing to occur only at FCC Federal buildings eliminating the VE program and its fraud" ... my question is "is there really that much fraud in the VE program? i've only heard of one or two instances since i've been licensed (not all that much time) ...
Has there been fraud in the VE program? Yes.
Is it widespread, or frequent? Not that we know of.

Most of the incidents I've heard of have been isolated, and have been few and far between. Like many other claims made by certain recalcitrants on the eHam and QRZ boards, or various ham radio email reflectors, there is little actual data from the last ~25 years to back up their claims... especially when compared to the tens of thousands (or more) of test sessions that have taken place since the FCC bailed out of the examination business.

The bottom line is that the FCC has no plans to resume amateur (and other) examinations, cost being the biggest factor. It's an expense that they haven't budgeted and have no plans to budget... or do we really want to revert to paying a testing fee to cover their costs?

And do we really want to go back to quarterly (or less) testing in one city in a region? During a work day?
And do we really want to eliminate places that don't happen to have "federal" buildings... could you imagine holding a work day all day test session in the back of the local post office?

For all their complaining, these clowns really don't think things through.

BTW, how much do you want to bet that most of the "fraud" complaints cited involve ARRL VEC sessions?