On Oct 21, 10:54?pm, Mike Coslo wrote:
Klystron wrote :

And yet, it begs the question of *should*
the tests be harder? And
were they harder back in the day?

Depends on what you mean by "harder".

This is an oft contentious issue that I think it is possible that
memory might be playing a sort of trick on people.

I have done a little research on the subject, imcluding
"study guides"
from the 1950's. I found the major difference was that
the 1950s tests
apparently contained more tube oriented material.

I have License Manuals from 1948, 1951, 1954, 1962 and 1971.
There are more differences than just the tube emphasis.

For example, the old study guides focused on a few subjects in-depth,
and left other subjects completely alone. Lots of stuff on
power supplies, including rectifiers and filters, but almost nothing
on receivers, for example. Lots of calculations of how to know
you're in the band with a frequency meter or crystal with a certain
percentage error and a certain temperature characteristics, but
nothing on RF exposure. Etc.

I was also struck by the fact that some of the questions are
verbatim
what they are now! Some of the electronic basics have not
changed, and
there are apparently only so many ways to ask the same question.

Sure - there's only so many ways to ask for the unit of resistance.

The big thing is that the old study guides simply indicated the areas
that would be covered on the exams, not the exact Q&A nor the exact
method of the test. So some mental processing was essential.

My references are for Novice and General, and I can say
that the Novice
written was very, very, easy.

I would say it was *basic*. It covered the regulations, some theory,
and that's about it.

Novice (back then) was also a one-year, nonrenewable, one-time
license with extremely limited privileges. So its test could be very
basic and still cover the needed material.

The General was of similar difficulty to
today's General test.

IMHO, it's not about difficulty but about covering the relevant
material, and being sure the person being tested knows that material.

At least since the late 1950's, the testing was no more difficult than
it is now. Many of the questions have changed, but in the context
of the
times it was quite similar.

Study guides were a substitute for question pools. Judging by the
verbatim content of some of the questions to what is in the
question
pools, there must have been some relationship.

Perhaps one of the reasons that many people believe that the old time
tests were so much more difficult is that at the time, they were for the
test taker! Some yougster taking a General test back in 1957
would
indeed find the test hard. After a few decades of college, practical
learning, work, and experience, and a look at the new tests, one can be
excused in thinking that they are "easy", because after all the
knowledge accumulation, they are easy.

That's certainly true. In fact, the person to worry about is the
experienced amateur who thinks the exams are "hard" even after
gaining experience.

However, note that we cannot look at the actual exams of those days,
because they aren't available. We can only extrapolate from the study
guides. Today's tests are wide open. Big difference there!

The test-taker of those old days had no clear idea how the questions
would be worded, nor how many would be on a given subject, so the
usual response was to assume the worst and
overprepare. Then the actual test seemed relatively simple.

At least that was my experience.


73 de Jim, N2EY