The Question Pool Committee (QPC) of the National Conference of Volunteer Examiner Coordinators (NCVEC) announced the withdrawal of two questions from the Technician class pool and two questions from the Extra class pool. Volunteer Examiner Coordinators (VECs) and Volunteer Examiners (VEs) must take action to remove these questions from use by July 1, 2010. Due to a rules change and pending action by the FCC, questions T2C02 and T2C03 from the July 2010 Technician Pool and questions E1C04 and E1C05 from the July 2008 Extra Pool may not be used in examinations after June 30.

The two Technician questions dealt with emergency communications and Section 97.113 of the FCC’s rules governing Amateur Radio. In March, the Commission released a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), WP Docket No 10-72, that proposes to amend the rules to provide that, under certain limited conditions, Amateur Radio operators may transmit messages during emergency and disaster preparedness drills, regardless of whether the operators are employees of entities participating in the drill.

“Adoption of the NPRM appears more likely than not, abolishing the temporary waiver [needed for government-sponsored emergency communication drills] (T2C02) and making T2C03 an invalid question,” the QPC said in a statement appearing on the NCVEC Web site. “Therefore, we feel it is best to withdraw these two questions now to avoid the possible inclusion of invalid information in training material now being prepared.”

The two Extra questions dealt with third party restrictions as defined in 97.109(e); the FCC has since deleted this rule, so the information is no longer applicable to the Amateur Service.