Dick Carroll wrote:

N2EY wrote:

In article , "Carl R. Stevenson"
writes:


I thought I'd forward the thoughtful comments below from
e-ham.net ... they say a LOT. (name/callsign omitted to
at least partially protect the innocent ...)



Why? We can always go searching through eham

Carl - wk3c

*********
For the last 25 years I have been in the US Coast Guard serving



BIG SNIPPAGE to make room for the internet cracker/hacker/spammers
to operate


Anyway . my two cents worth.
************
END QUOTE FROM E-HAM.NET




There are so many holes, inaccuracies and downright lies in that
piece that it deserves no credibility whatever.

Some of it makes some sense. an older ham I know got his license
back when he was in an army signal core training course, which included
CW. The people in his group were granted two day passes to visit the
FCC field office to take ham tests. All passed the code test, but only
my friend passed the written. The way he tells it, few even bothered to
fill in any of that test. This was in the early fifties during Korea, and
the highest they had then was the general license.

So it may have been that the people in the eham story were "required"
to take ham tests to get weekend passes or other such prize.





-------------------------

...even though the UK has dropped mandatory Morse testing, they are
still testing for it and retain 4 classes of licenses and they have
different call signs for each class so you can tell which station has
a CW license:

Class A has 12 wpm test and grants calls with M0 prefix

Class B licensees pass the same written test as Class A, but not CW,
and they now get full HF privileges. Their calls are M1 prefixes

Intermediate A (like Novice) has 5 wpm test and grants frequencies
above 144 MHz. They get calls with a prefix 2+Letter+0 (any letter
is possible)

Intermediate B has same written test as Intermediate A and no Morse.
They get call with a prefix 2+Letter+1.

Apparently many are still trying to get a call sign indicating they
have CW skills. (a rather low form of incentive licensing, but still
incentive licensing).

But what does the UK's "FCC" get out of it?