RadioBanter - View Single Post

June 6th 05, 04:11 PM

wrote:
wrote:

"Going back" ain't gonna happen but let's not dig this one up for the
umpteenth time.

Kids in that timeframe lived in the remnants of the
old "children
should be seen and not heard" mindset. Unless some publication
was
somehow directly related to school classwork it was written
for adults.
Particulary if there was any technical content and the ARRL
followed suite.

Bingo - why can't that be the way things are again?

What has changed - besides the general volume of test questions?

The license requirements
*weren't* reduced (as NCVEC and others want to do) to make
the tests easier for kids to pass.

Of course not, no more so than the state made it easier
for kids to get
drivers licenses. For the same underlying regulatory reasons.

Yet there were plenty of "young'uns". Which proves my point,
thanks.

Without meaning to be obtuse James, what IS your point anyway??

The "Beginner And Novice"
columns weren't aimed at teenagers or any other age group.
And that may be a big part of what made them so attractive
to kids!

Nah, never entered our minds.

Not consciously.

You know what '50s kids thought consciously and unconsiously. Damn
you're good . . .

Ham radio was an adult hobby and we
accepted it. Period.

'zactly. If ya wanted to be part of it you met the standards
for it. Watta concept, huh? Somebody tell NCVEC.

There are a few topics and individuals I generally avoid getting
involved with in this NG. One of those is the unending stream of
circular threads about how tough or untough the writtens are or should
be or should not be simply because I happen to have very little
interest in the subject.

The NCVEC can make all the noises and proposals it wants but when it's
all said and done the FCC still calls the shots. If the writtens
satisfy the FCC the writtens are OK with me.

My ho-hum attitude toward the writtens is based on my belief that the
writtens have never had any particular effect on whether or not any
individual becomes a ham or not kids included. I've never run into an
example of somebody not becoming a ham because they couldn't get past
the writtens - have you?? Have you ever run into a newbie licensed in
recent times you consider unqualified to operate because he/she hadn't
been adequately tested?

I 'spose the writtens were a bit more difficult in days of yore because
we had to have a better grip on some technical topics than newbies need
today to remain in compliance with the regs. A typical example being
the questions we had on calculating the thermal drift of the xtals we
used for frequency control back then. When was the last time any OF in
this NG plugged in his/her favorite FT-243 mounted treasure to get on a
freq?? SPARE me!! Hell, ya *can't* operate out-of-band today, the
friggin' radios won't let it happen by FCC mandate. So there went one
set of calcs we had to know. And on and on and on.

We were used to having to read at the adult level
when it came to technical publications, there were no
options, we
didn't know the difference. There were beginners
publications in some
hobby fields but I don't remember any in ham radio

"How To Become A Radio Amateur"
"Learning The Radiotelegraph Code"
"Understanding Amateur Radio"
"So You Want To Be A Ham"
"ABC's of Hma Radio"

OK, now I remember the book on learning the code, I had a copy. Don't
remember any of the rest. The learning the code book taught me nothing,
all it was good for was the listing of the W1AW code practice
schedules. All the rest of it was on me, copy, copy, copy until I got
it. The only youth-oriented beginners publication on ham radio which
led me to actually learning anything was the Boy Scout Radio Merit
Badge booklet. Add it to your list.

and they were all
written for adults.

BINGO!

.. . . bingo what . . . ?

73 de Jim, N2EY

w3rv