On 25 Jul 2006 12:12:44 -0700, "an old freind"
wrote:

Al Klein wrote:

There are CBers who
are competent communications engineers, but the majority today - CB or
ham band - want to buy a radio and put it on the air.

granted

now what is WRONG with that?

That's fine - for CB - that's what it's for. Ham radio is NOT CB.
(Or, at least, it wasn't supposed to be.)

Any license
requirement is just an annoyance they get around any way they can -
except by actually studying and learning enough to pass tests.

then how do they get the lecnse?

They memorize the answers.

they learn enough to pass

If you call learning how to cheat "learning".

Take a close look at a General test from the 50s and one from today.
The difference isn't that the current one dropped old technical
questions and added equivalent questions about modern modes - it's
that the current test has dropped the technical requirement low enough
that it's a joke. Everyone says that CW is old hat and modern modes
have replaced it. Okay - let's see a question asking for a PSK
interface schematic, including full isolation. That's just simple
audio and DC stuff.

why?

Why what? You said we should forget CW and concentrate on more modern
aspects of the hobby. A computer-radio interface is modern.

Let's have questions on Rayleigh fading and its
effect on maximum usable baud rate at various frequencies, so no one
complains about the FCC not giving us permission to run 9600 bps on
20. Modern stuff.

why do you need to know that in order to operate?
to just get on the air..

Because if you try to run much over 100 baud on 20 you're just making
interference. the fact that you didn't know that shows that there are
things you need to learn before you start transmitting in "modern
modes".

Understand in the case you mention is NOT required only obeinace
understanding hopefully comes later

How do you begin to understand WHY you can't run more speed on 20 by
just operating?

different folks come to different levels of understanding about
different subjects at different time

you're saying that not everyone is equal. then why treat everyone as
if everyone were equal?

the license is a permit to learn not proof you have learned

The license is a permit to operate. Whether you ever learn anything
after you get it is totally irrelevant to the license.

And no more published answers.

NO can do the court have more or less so, along the long standing body
of the FCC not chaleanceing Bash et all years ago to close the
quiestion pools NOW would more or less require an act of Congress or a
change in ITU treaty lang.

Which part of any treaty says that the answers have to be published?
Quote it.

It's the "why doesn't this work, and don't give me any of that
technical BS" syndrome. People don't want to know how things work, or
why they don't work, but they're angry that they don't. And don't you
dare tell anyone it's his fault for trying to receive a 440 repeater
80 miles away with a 1/4 wave antenna 5 feet off the ground. His
friend, just 3 doors down, copies the repeater S9+ (with a dual 11
element beam 75 feet in the air and LMR600 coax). Now, without any
technical BS or monetary expenditure, what does he have to do to
receive it?

never heard such a complaint ever

I see it a few times a day on some fora.

It's not that no one ever pulled that stuff 50 years ago - but it was
so far in the minority that it was below the noise level. Today it's
the majority of newcomers. "I have a right to use the public
airwaves, and I don't want to have to learn anything."

Funny all I heard of Ham radio for many years was the "wizards of 80M"
all code tested hams

And all I heard was hams talking about designing and building things
that everyone knew couldn't be done. I guess you don't remember when
440 MHz was considered much too high a frequency to be useful for
anything. After all, how useful was a frequency you couldn't transmit
on as far as you could read a billboard?

indeed I have never heard the sort of Vile lang I have heard from that
bunch on CB perhaps midwestern Cber are just different prehaps you are
just full of it

And perhaps you just don't know as much as you'd like to think you do.
Let's start with English, shall we? Or do you think you really
communicate well with the mish-mash you use instead of a real
language?