RadioBanter - View Single Post

January 22nd 04, 05:29 PM

(stewart) wrote in message om...
(N2EY) wrote in message ...

The big mystery, though, is why FCC got all fired up back in 1958 and
started making noises about changing the system, only 5 years after they'd
done the Big Giveaway of 1953. My best guess is that they had a serious
case of Sputnik Fever.

Yep... and guess what, it is 2004 now, and the 'ol US of A is going
thru a serious case of "Sacred Vessel" fever.

What is "Sacred Vessel" fever, Stew? Never heard that one!

We need to give the young people who are willing to learn about RF, a
decent place to learn in the ham ranks, with incentives that match the
requirements.

Agreed! That's why we need different license levels, for one thing.

What changed? The Internet... Cell Phones... The WTC attack...
Chinese astronauts... Outsourced Engineering jobs to India... A
terminated fool-for-a-governer who allowed illegal aliens to sink the
California economy into a $36bln debt... A President who refuses to
guard our country's borders, and who now proposes to let illegal
aliens sink the USA economy (or is it just a Chess Gambit, designed to
pull a plank from the Dem's platform?).

What do any of those things have to do with the tests for a ham radio
license?

The ARRL proposal is GOOD FOR AMERICA, and is the obvious right thing
to do.

Parts of it are. Other parts are not so good - like the free upgrades.

btw, the proposed revamped Novice is nothing like your 'Colt' ideas.

You old naysaying

[expletive deleted]

talk about work ethic, and bemoan the lowering
of standards...

Are you talking about me?

But it is now clear that you simply don't want to
share frequencies (which are now all virtually unused!), nor
information (which is now all 10-15 years out of date!)... you just
want to sit on your

[expletives deleted]

None of that is true in my case, so you can't be talking about me.

This old

[expletive deleted]

likes Morse code up to a point, but it can NO LONGER be
the centerpiece of contention in Amateur Radio - we MUST move on.

We have, Stew. The code test is only one part of the debate.

Do you think giving all Techs a free upgrade to General, and all
Advanceds
a free upgrade to Extra would be good things? I don't.

We are DONE listening to this MORSE CODE

[expletive deleted]

STOP IT!

Sounds like you're telling people to shut up, Stew. Is that what civil
debate in a free society means to you?

Get on with
your lives! Do SOMETHING positive. ANYTHING!

We are. We're working towards a better license structure and tests for
same.
There's some disagreement about how to do that.

K0HB, Hans, has proposed a radically different license and test
structure here.
Lots of good debate on it. No words from you, though.

Now, as for getting "the young people who are willing to learn about
RF, a
decent place to learn in the ham ranks, with incentives that match the
requirements", think about the following:

The greatest period of growth in the number of US hams in the past 70
years was the 12 year period from 1951 to 1962. The number of US hams
grew from about 100,000 to almost 250,000 in that time, even though
amateur radio was bedeviled
by TVI and other problems. One of the prime reasons for that growth, I
think, was the introduction (in 1951) of the Novice license, with its
simple 20 question written test and 5 wpm code test. But that license
also gave very limited privileges and was only good for one year,
after which the new ham
had to upgrade to a permanent license or leave the ham bands. Many,
many of
those new hams were young people.

The young people today are not lazier or dumber than the young people
of those
times, so if we're not getting them like we did back then, the problem
must lie elsewhere.

73 de Jim, N2EY