On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 22:55:05 GMT, "geocal" wrote:

I suspect that Bob McConnell is being facetious with his suggestion about
building a QRP rig as part of a ham examination.


I was beginning to wonder if anyone caught that. The initial
suggestion was that a ham license was worth less after the last
restructuring eliminated half of them and reduced the CW requirement.
My sarcastic reply was that if they wanted to revert to a time when
the license was more difficult to obtain, they weren't going back far
enough, but should revert all the way to the era when only an FCC
engineer was qualified to test and issue licenses. Then add the
assembly to really separate the hams from CBers that can memorize the
text book.

Apparently, high schools no longer teach sarcasm as a literary device.
Even my pseudo HTML tag didn't clue them in.

I am curious about one thing. In 1977 I took the FCC test series for
the commercial phone license. I breezed through third class and passed
the second class elements, but missed first class by 6 points. If I
had turned around and taken the amateur tests at that time, without
the code requirement, what license would I have ended up with?

Bob McConnell
N2SPP