ARRL VEC Up to Date in Processing Deluge

ARRL-VEC "COMPLETELY CAUGHT UP"

The ARRL-VEC has made it over the restructuring application mountain and down the other side. "We're completely caught up!" ARRL-VEC Manager Bart Jahnke, W9JJ, exulted this week. All applications through June 16 receipts that were able to be "routinely processed" were set to be transmitted to the FCC June 22. ARRL-VEC staff members already have begun tackling receipts from this past Monday, June 19.

Jahnke said he anticipated very shortly getting back to a "normal" 10-day wait between test session and FCC license grant. He emphasized that the length of any applicant's wait continues to largely depend on when the test session paperwork arrives at ARRL-VEC.

ARRL-VEC's Pete Warner checks applications
from the restructuring upgrade rush.
[Rick Lindquist, N1RL]

Fred Maia, W5YI, of the W5YI-VEC reports he's closing in on being current and expects to be there by July 4. "This was the hardest spring period we ever had in our 16 years of doing this," he said. "We're starting to see daylight." As of week's end, W5YI-VEC had processed April and May test sessions and was working on session receipts of June 12.

On the downside, Jahnke says, some applicants could be in for additional delays because of missing or problematic information on their paperwork. Applications are not transmitted to the FCC until all information is complete and problems resolved, Jahnke said. The same goes for applications where the information provided does not jibe with what's already in the FCC database. He estimated that fewer than 1% of the 25,000 applications filed since January 1 fall into the "problem" category, however.

Among applications in the huge influx since the FCC announced restructuring last December, ARRL-VEC staffers have encountered incomplete or missing items, including element credit, proof of license, Social Security number, and even the applicant's or the volunteer examiners' signatures.

The FCC's Universal Licensing System also has burped on applicants' attempts to upgrade and renew their licenses at the same time. Because of a ULS software problem, combining a renewal with an upgrade--or with an address or a name change, for that matter--will cause the ULS to reject the application altogether, Jahnke explained. As a result, the transactions must be filed separately.

Upgrade applicants whose licenses turn out to be in the two-year renewal grace period also can expect delays. "You need a current license to get your upgrade granted," Jahnke explains, "so the renewal must be filed first, then the upgrade."

Other applicants unwittingly have stumbled into problems by filing separate applications with the FCC via the ULS. For example, a few individuals with pending upgrade applications in the meantime have applied for and been granted vanity call signs via the ULS. "What happens is the person ends up with another call sign that doesn't match the one on their upgrade application," Jahnke says. He advises applicants either to wait until their upgrades have been processed before applying for a vanity call sign or to let the ARRL-VEC know that they have another application pending via the ULS.

Jahnke advised applicants who attended an April or May ARRL-VEC test session and have not yet found the results of their earned upgrade on the ULS to contact ARRL-VEC by telephone (do not send e-mail) at 860-594-0300. He says the ARRL-VEC still is holding some applications with errors or missing information.

There are no comments on this article: Post One