"R J Carpenter" ) writes:
"Ian White, G3SEK" wrote in message
...
R J Carpenter wrote:

"Ian White, G3SEK" wrote in message
...
Gregg wrote:
Behold, Tim Wescott signalled from keyed 4-1000A filament:
There's just not enough VHF homebrew out there!

IMHO, we can thank that no-code licence that restricts you to
commercially-made equipment for this.


There is actually a lot of HB associated with VHF, but the effort just
doesn't happen to go into building QRP transceivers.

Code proficiency is totally irrelevant to that. Some of this country's
most advanced VHF homebrewers have held a no-code licence for over 30
years. The same is true in Germany, France and several other European
countries.

Ah, but according to his URL Greg is in Canada, where IIRC the no-code
licence does NOT allow homebrew transmitters.

But code proficiency still doesn't come into it, at all.


Yes and no. Agreed, code proficiency is not related to the ABILITY to do
homebrew.

If, as I think is true , the authorities (Canadian) forbid you to use a
homebrew transmitter with a no-code licence, it is wrong to say that code
proficiency doesn't come into it. OK, you could build the transmitter, but
it would be illegal to use it. As an aside, I wonder what happens to a US
no-code ham with a homebrew transmitter who operates in Canada....

73 de bob w3otc


No, code has nothing to do with it.

It's the written test that determines whether or not someone can build their
own transmitter, or rather use it.

Up till 1990, there were two licenses, amateur and advanced, and each had
a code test. (Oh, there was also the digital license, introduced in 1978,
that required no code test, but was limited to only some VHF/UHF bands,
and the focus was for digital work. It barely got noticed after it was
introduced.) But then restructuring came along. The code test was spun
out, and the test for the entry level license was apparently simplified.
I've never really seen the new test, but the whole point of the
restructuring was to make it easier for newcomers to the hobby. And for
the basic license, it was decided that few were interested in building,
so there was no sense making the test to deal with such details. The tradeoff
was that you cannot use a home made transmitter with that license.

The advanced test allows for building transmitters, and higher power (a
kilowatt instead of 250W), and I think it is needed to run a repeater.

The code test was not required for either license, but then you could not
operate below 30MHz. Hence, you could have an advanced license, but not
have passed the code test, and the result was you'd have full priviliges,
but only above 30MHz.

There were two levels of code test. 5wpm got you full privileges below
4MHz, ie 160 and 80 metres, but nothing else at HF. (I think that may have
been changed, for more HF useage, but I can't remember.)

The 12wpm code test gave in effect full priviliges, minus the bits the
advanced test allowed.

So it was rather a mix and match system.

Michael VE2BVW