From: on Nov 26, 4:11 pm

wrote:
From: on Fri, Nov 25 2005 4:26 pm
wrote:


Did you work for FCC in 1951, Len? Did you see FCC chuckling
at handwritten letters?

In 1951 I was working at my first full-time job, nowhere
close to DC.

So you don't really know what you're talking about when you
talk about FCC "chuckling" over some comments.

Having seen some of the handwritten "comments" sent in on
the 2,272 filings in WT Docket 98-143 and ALL of the 3,795
filings in WT Docket 05-235, some are a hilarious barrel
of laffs! :-)

[ chuckle, chuckle ]

By the way, Docket 98-143 had 303 ADDITIONAL filings after the
twice-revised final end date of 15 Jan 05, the latest being
made on 5 August 2005! :-)

98-143 had an average of 206 filings per month while 05-235
had 949 per month. The percentage of written letter filings
on 98-143 was 10.4 while on 05-235 it was only 2.2 percent.


Things are a bit different now. Internet access to ALL
government is faster than overnight express mail. FCC has
to accept ALL filings. By law.

It's always been that way, Len.

Not before 1934. :-)

[ chuckle, chuckle ]

What...no pointy remark to that? :-)

[ chuckle, chuckle ]


Back about 1964 - a bit more than a dozen years after 1951, and more
than 25 years before "the internet went public", the proposed changes
that would come to be known as "incentive licensing" caused FCC to
receive over 6000 comments. Back then the US amateur population was
less than half what it is today, and practically all of them went by US
mail.

Did the FCC "chuckle" over them?

Did you work for FCC in 1964, Jim-Jim? Did you see all those
"6000" comments?

No - but they existed, nonetheless.

Riiiiight...you went to the Reading Room at the FCC to "see"
them? Was a fairly easy access to documents before 11
September 2001.

Oh, right...the ARRL TOLD YOU! Or you channeled St. Hiram on
the subject and you got the number in a vision?

1964 is FORTY ONE YEARS AGO, old-timer. Two generations in time.
CWO Johnny Walker had already gotten his first spy payments from
the KGB. The Vietnam War was beginning to hot up again now that
the French had given up there. Communist China was busy with
their "cultural revolution." The beginning of the solid-state
era had begun. Teletype Corporation was busy starting marketing
for their 100 WPM teletypewriters. The first of the comm sats
had been lofted. The Cold War was still set on "simmer" with no
sign the flame had gone out. We got coast-to-coast TV, in color,
and some radio amateurs thought manual morse code marked
"excellence in radio!" :-)

[ chuckle, chuckle ]

In 1964 I was Chief Engineer at Birtcher Instruments Division
and had received my Army Honorable Discharge four years before
that.

In other words, you had nothing to do with FCC then, either.

"Nothing?!?" Mais non!

Eight years prior to 1964 I'd already passed my First Phone test
and had been working at four broadcast stations (got the
signatures on the back of my First Phone license certificate).
Had already renewed that First Phone once...through the Long
Beach, CA, FCC Field Office (which was/is in the San Pedro
harbor area). I'd applied for, and gotten two CB licenses (no
test, never was a test for them). I'd already worked at a
southern California broadcast station on a part-time basis, got
that signature on the back of my first renewed First Phone
certificate. I was still subscribing for updates to the FCC
regulations (loose leaf format) from the U.S. GPO but that
would soon change to bound format, reprint every two years
(too many radio services already). I'd already used that First
Phone for radio communications while a student pilot (given up
due to cost of private flying vs other expenses), avoiding
having to get a Restricted 3rd Class Phone (which required
some letters of explanation from the Long Beach, CA, FCC Field
Office to the instructors at Skyways that operated out of Van
Nuys Airport...they didn't believe it). In my job of designing
and engineering semiconductor test sets at Birtcher, all I had
to do on "FCC matters" was making certain those test sets and
their plug-ins didn't exceed incidental RF radiation limits
(the very low-duty cycle plug-ins were found to cause RF
oscillation at tester pulse edges, solved by using ferrite
tubes as chokes on the test socket leads). A renewal of the
CBs was coming up soon, those renewals, pro forma as they were,
had to go to the FCC...and with notary public seals.

Electro-Optical Systems in Pasadena was busy hiring for their
spacecraft work and I shift to there from Monterey Park, CA,
in late 1964. Spacecraft fabrication in a clean room didn't
involve any "FCC licenses." What RF work was needed took
place under government radio regulations, not civil radio.
FCC was not involved in government radio then...or now.

[ chuckle, chuckle ]

No, sweetums, I was NOT opining anything pro/con on morse code
skill as the primus inter pares of amateur radio operating
excellence nor had I any "incentives" for ham radio in 1964.
Based on my "first job in radio" I already knew that morse
code was a dead end in radio in 1964, 41 years ago. Why
bother pursuing a dying technique back then?

[ chuckle, chuckle ]