On Sep 18, 7:30�pm, AJ Lake wrote:
wrote:
Had there not been a treaty requirement, FCC might have not had a
Morse test for Tech from the beginning.

The treaty applied to 30MHz and below.

No, it applied to 1000 MHz and below, back when the Technician was
created.

Originally the treaty required Morse Code testing for all amateurs.
Then in the late 1940s (1947 Atlantic City conference, IIRC),
additional wording was added that removed the requirement for licenses
that only allowed operation above 1000 MHz.

Over time that 1000 MHz limit was lowered, until it finally reached 30
MHz. And then in 2003 the whole code test thing was made optional.

Techs couldn't go there.
The treaty wouldn't apply to them.

The treaty in effect in 1951 applied to them.

A lot of VHF/UHF experimenting in those days did use
Morse Code

Techs only had 220 and up. Why require a 5 WPM test for moon bounce??

What mode would a 1950s or 1960s ham use for moonbounce? Aurora?
Meteor or tropo scatter? Satellite comms?

and still does today. EME (moonbounce), meteor scatter, aurora,
troposcatter and other "weak signal" work was almost all CW.

If Techs do all that CW work today *without* a code test, what
justification
is there for requiring the code test back then?

1) The treaty
2) Those modes were new back then.

The big question is, how many Techs actually did that stuff?

Was it [incentive licensing] really a screw up?
I think the real mistake was back in 1952.

My old boss used to moan bitterly about the 52 license change
when I worked
for him in the 50s. He had been a Class A.

And he still was, only they called it Advanced and it made no
difference in privileges.

But the difference is that in
that change he *didn't lose* any privileges.

Instead, a lot of hams got them for free.

He did lose privileges with the
later Incentive Licensing change though. Which change do
you think he felt
worse about?

Sounds like a sense of entitlement to me.

You can just imagine the reaction from hams who'd worked hard to get
their Advanceds or Extras, then suddenly found the HF 'phone
bands
flooded with Generals and Conditionals who had the same privileges.

Probably like having the HF frequencies flooded by no-coders... 8-O

No, much worse.

The FCC has been reducing license requirements for almost 30 years, so
the final dropping of the code test should have been no surprise for
anyone. In fact I am still amazed that it took FCC 3-1/2 years to do
it after the treaty changed. I figured six months, tops.

But in the late 1940s the FCC went through a long process of
developing a new license structure that was a lot more complex than
the old ABC system. And when they rolled it out, one of the big
features was that the all-privileges license would be harder to get.

Then at the last minute they tossed away most of the idea and went in
a completely different direction.

Another incentive would be increased power.

If I were made boss, the maximum power allowed for any class
would be 100W.
And if used as an incentive, start at say 25 W for the entry
license.

How's anybody gonna work EME with that?

Just
think of the reduction in neighbor complaints. Just think of the
increase in operator skill...

But to do it you'd have to take privileges away from almost every ham.
Worse, they could not get those privileges back.

You'd also make a lot of expensive gear practically worthless.

Who will be the very last Novice? The very last Advanced? How long
will it take for those license classes to disappear?

They will likely disappear when they change to one license...
(Like the Class A disappeared.)

But the Class A didn't disappear.

In the 1951 restructuring, it was renamed "Advanced", and survives to
this day. When it was first closed to new issues at the end of 1952,
FCC still kept it on the books. That made a big difference in 1968 and
1969 when the IL changes happened, because Advanceds had a lot more
'phone space than Generals after those changes.

73 de Jim, N2EY