"Chuck...K1KW" wrote in message news:HG2Pb.89209$5V2.165673@attbi_s53...
What really amazes me is you folks don't know what the real test is for
getting on HF!!!!

Who are "you folks", Chuck?

You have to do it!!!

Exactly!

That means really figuring out how
to put up the appropriate antenna, tuning it, tuning and running your rig
properly, ect.

Well, most rigs today don't require tuneup. And a lot of them have
automatic
antenna tuners.

You can get all the answers correct on today's exam and
still fail in the real world.

That indicates that the written tests are inadequate.

In fact, there have been "hams" here locally that tried for over a year to
"get out" and learned more in that process than they ever learned by
memorizing today's exam questions.

A year? Good heavens, back in the bad old days, the entry-level
license was
only good for a year! And that was back when ham rigs actually had to
be
tuned up!

If it takes someone with a license and a reasonable budget of time and
money
a whole year to set up a working HF station, something's really wrong.

I submit that these IMPROVEMENTS recommended by the ARRL are a good start
and will have more people LEARNING how to get on HF.

How? There's no additional written testing proposed - in fact, a big
part
of the proposal is free upgrades. If someone doesn't know how to get
on
HF now, how will reducing the entry-level writtens and free upgrades
teach them?

A GOOD thing.

I think the new Novice ida can be a good thing. 37 years ago, that's
how I got started. Didn't take me a year, either, even though I had
to build my transmitter, antenna, receiver...

The
bands are FAR less busy than they were 30 years ago.

How do you know?

We have more bands and modes than 30 years ago, so we're apt to
be spread out more.

Unless we get more
people into this great hobby, it's gone...

We have more hams today than ever before! 30 years ago (1974), there
were less than half as many hams as today. So the number of hams isn't
the problem at all.


And to really improve HF operations on ham radio...we must get rid of the
archaic mode divisions on each band.

Let's do this:

Lower 15-20% of each band: CW only
Middle 20-25% of each band: Mixed digital/CW (digital preferred)
Rest of the band: Analog phone/image.

80 meters, for example:

3500-3575 CW only
3575-3725 Digital/CW
3725-4000 Analog phone/image

I would like to see us have the same
privileges as the rest of the world's amateurs enjoy

Including their power limits and written tests?

....or are we not good enough???

We're simply too numerous.

73 de Jim, N2EY