Mike Coslo wrote:
wrote in
oups.com:
On Jan 25, 9:26 am, Cecil Moore wrote:
wrote:
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.
Thanks Jim, for the history lesson.
You're welcome, Cecil. Thanks for reading.
The old Conditional was preceded by the Class C, which was essentially
the same license with a different name. Early 1930s until the 1951
restructuring.
Some folks think that the 1964-65 rules Conditional changes really cut
into the growth of US ham radio. After those changes, a ham who wanted
a renewable license with HF privileges pretty much had to go to an FCC
exam point unless s/he lived *way* out in the boonies. Just getting to
the exam could be a major journey, depending on where you lived.
I understand what you say here Jim, but I don't agree. If a person
can go to the trouble of learning Morse code, they should be able to
go to the trouble of traveling to the FCC exam points.
It's a completely different situation. Learning Morse Code is directly
related
to getting the license and what is done with it. Traveling to a
distant city back
in the days before the Interstate Highway System isn't.
I can't
imagine that a peron who went to the trouble of learning the
material would feel otherwise.
I can. And it's not about how anyone felt - it's about the reality of
the
requirements.
It all depends on the situation, Mike. Consider the case posed by
K8MN,
which was very common in the 1950s and 1960s. How was a young 1950s
ham supposed to get to a license test session 120 miles away, and be
there before
8 AM on a weekday morning?
Remember too that the distance rule was "air line", meaning straight-
line
distance on the map, not actual distance on the road. In many places,
125 miles air-line could be twice that on the road. More than three
hours
at the common speed limit of 40 mph - if everything went according to
plan.
For me, the biggest difficulty in getting to the FCC office was the
fact that
tests in the Philly office were only given on Mondays, Tuesdays and
Wednesdays - which were all school days. Young hams like me had to
wait for summer, or a school holiday that was not a Federal holiday.
(There was no way a school kid would skip school for a day to take
a ham radio exam!) With the 30 day wait to retest, there was a real
incentive to pass on the first try.
I was lucky - all I needed was decent shoes and a couple of subway
tokens. Three quarters of a mile to the 69th Street Terminal, the
Market-Frankford Subway-Elevated to 2nd Street, and a block south to
the US Custom House.
I travelled about 120 mikes fro my Tech, about 300 for my General
written CSCE, a mere 20 for my Element 1, and aroud 70 for my Extra.
Round trip or one way? Weekday or weekend? Did you have to be there at
8 AM or be turned away?
Most of all, note the wide variation in distances. I'll bet you went
to different
VE sessions at various hamfests, some close to home, some not. You
went
when it was convenient for *you*.
My point is that in the Conditional days there was no choice. You went
to
the FCC office, on their schedule, unless you lived beyond the
Conditional
distance.
And note this most of all: FCC didn't change the distance in 1954
because
of concern for hams having to travel long distances to get to an exam
session.
FCC changed the distance to reduce their workload giving the exams!
73 de Jim, N2EY