On Jan 24, 10:00*am, Cecil Moore wrote:
wrote:
- When the Conditional license existed, it too used the same
written test as the General and Technician.

I heard that the reason the FCC was so protective of
those exams is that they only had two different versions
of them. Any truth to that?

Hello Cecil,

I don't know if there were only two exams in those days. I do know that
there were not a
lot of different exam versions then - I've seen reports of there being
only three, and others that the number never exceeded five

In any event, there were so few that if a person kept going back to FCC
and retook the written exam, pretty soon they'd have to come across the
exact same exam they'd taken before.

As I understand it, the limited number of different written exams was
also one reason for
the 30-day-wait-before-retesting rule.

One source I saw said Conditionals accounted for about
25% of 1950s US hams.

As I remember, Conditionals who moved closer than 75 miles
to an FCC office were supposed to retake the General. I
never did that and, if I remember correctly, I was later
grandfathered to General - can't remember exactly when.

What happened was this:

Prior to about 1953, all amateur exams were conducted by FCC unless
someone lived more than 125 miles "air-line" from an FCC exam point, or
was a shut-in. This included Novices and Technicians. Also, if a ham
who obtained a license "by-mail" moved to less than 125 miles from an
FCC exam point, they had 90 days to retest or forfeit their license.

On top of all that, the Extra/Advanced/Class A exams were not routinely
available by mail, and if a ham with a by-mail license wanted one of
those licenses, they not only had to travel to FCC, they also had to
retake the General exams first.

The reason the license was called "Conditional" was that it was issued
conditionally, in FCC's view, and when the conditions changed you had
to retest.

Most of those rules changed about 1953-54:

Novice and Technician became by-mail licenses regardless of distance.

The "Conditional distance was reduced from 125 miles to 75 miles
"air-line"

The requirement to retest if you moved closer was eliminated.

And in February 1953, Conditionals and Generals got the same operating
privileges as Advanceds and Extras.

That state of affairs lasted a decade or so, until 1964-65. Then FCC
changed the "Conditional distance" from 75 miles to 175 miles, and
increased the number of exam points. These changes greatly reduced the
places where a person in CONUS could qualify for a new Conditional
license because of distance.

Those 1964-65 changes to the Conditional were one reason for some of
the opposition to the "incentive licensing" changes that came later in
the 1960s.

Finally in the mid-1970s the FCC phased out the Conditional completely.
They simply stopped offering it, and began renewing all Conditionals as
Generals. This was in the era when FCC not only had many scheduled
exams, but would also send out traveling examiners upon request if a
minimum number of examinees could be guaranteed. Ham exam sessions were
being conducted by FCC at hamfests, conventions, and club meetings, and
the perceived need for the Conditional disappeared.

---

Your recollections are correct, Cecil, with minor corrections to the
Conditional distance. Which changed right around the time you got the
license, as did the retest rules.

73 de Jim, N2EY