RadioBanter - View Single Post - Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse...

January 20th 04, 11:23 PM

(Brian Kelly) wrote in message . com...
(Art Harris) wrote in message . com...
"Chuck...K1KW" wrote:

What really amazes me is you folks don't know what the real test is for
getting on HF!!!! You have to do it!!! That means really figuring out how
to put up the appropriate antenna, tuning it, tuning and running your rig
properly, ect.

It can't be that hard; after all, hundreds of thousands of CBers
managed to get on 11 meters. Modern rigs don't require much "tuning"
and most newbies tend to buy pre-assembled dipoles or multiband
verticals. The rigs are plug and play with microphones included.

We had a pretty good license structure in the mid '60s. Most folks
started with a (non-renewable) Novice ticket with very limited
privileges to get their feet wet. Then they upgraded to General with
full amateur privileges.

That wasn't good enough for ARRL. They insisted we needed more license
classes and more exams (incentive licensing). FCC bought into it, and
we all had to upgrade or lose privileges. Now, ARRL is cheapening the
value of those higher class licenses they insisted we get.

Don't mean to nit-pick here but it was the FCC which dreamed up
Incentive Licensing, not the League. The FCC proposal was far more
Dracinian than was the League's response to it. In the end the FCC
bought into some of the League's arguments but imposed it's own
"vision" in other cases. If you go back thru the history of ham
regulation you'll find that it's usually been the FCC which decided
to generate the regulatory lurches, not the ARRL.

I wuz gonna post something similar but ya beat me to it.

Some details:

FCC's 1965 proposal included such doozies as:

- all Advanceds (40K of them, about 15% of US hams at the time)
*DEMOTED* to General class

- new "Amateur First" class license, with new written test and 16 wpm
code test, plus 1 year experience as a General.

- distinctive callsigns for all license classes so you'd know right
away who was who.

- subbands that were even more restrictive (like the lower 50 kHz of
the CW/data subbands being Extra only, and even more 'phone being
taken away
from Generals)

And the ancient history is even more interesting. Before 1951 there
were effectively only two license levels and one code test speed. FCC
thought
that wasn't enough, and in '51 brought out three new levels and placed
new restrictions on HF 'phone. Then in late '52 they reversed
themselves and
gave all hams except Novices and Techs all operating privileges. Why
the
turnabout? Nobody seems to know.

But after just 5 years (1958) of the new system, FCC was unhappy with
it
and wanted changes. By 1963 they were so unhappy they said that things
were going to change one way or another, and wanted proposals. ARRL's
original 1963 proposal did not require any additional code testing for
full privileges, and only one more written test (the old Advanced).
There
were also at least ten other proposals, many from individuals, and FCC
took elements from many of them.

Personally, I think FCC had a bad case of "Sputnik Fever".

I figure that in about five years we'll have only one license class,
and that it will require only a single simple multiple-choice exam.
Will that re-energize ham radio? I doubt it.

Oddly enough, in the years following "incentive licensing", the number
of US hams grew like mad after having been flat through most of the
1960s.

Go figure - they upped the requirements and ham radio grew...

73 de Jim, N2EY