"Bill Turner" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 22 Jan 2004 15:15:21 +0000, Bob wrote:

There will be a group of new hams on the HF bands, myself included,
how are you going to welcome them? Are you going to help them become
good legal operators or are you going to label them CB plussers, and
ignore, tout them?

__________________________________________________ _______

Bob, your question is a good one, but there is a more subtle question
hidden within it.

Why do we even have a license structure which causes such divisiveness
between hams? I hate this beating of breasts and bragging about how
smart and clever I am to have an Extra class license and how dumb you
are since you don't.

The Old Timers will remember back in the days before incentive licensing
when there were essentially two licenses: Novice and General. The
Novice was just to get your feet wet and was non-renewable. You either
upped to General or gave up the hobby. The divisiveness we see today
didn't exist.

I miss those days.

--
73, Bill W6WRT

p.s. Purists will note there were other classes back then (Technician,
Conditional, Advanced) but the numbers were very small relative to
Novice and General.

Boy you hit that right on the head. Incentive licensing is the single
biggest reason we have all this bitching and moaning today.

I've said this ever since 1968 when most of my (then) General class
privledges were ripped from me.

Now we have the league with its 180 degree reversal on the subject. Can
anyone say hypocrite ?

Dan/W4NTI