On Sep 14, 10:45*pm, AJ Lake wrote:
ken scharf wrote:
The LACK of incentive plus the 20wpm code was the reason so few upgraded
to the extra class,

Correct. Before Incentive Licensing there was not much incentive to go above
General since there were no additional privileges. Those who did upgrade to
Extra did it for the accomplishment.

Actually, the period when Generals-and-above had all privileges was
less than 16 years (Feb 1953 to Nov 1968). Before Feb 1953, you needed
an Advanced or Extra to use 'phone on the ham bands between 2.5 and 25
MHz.

And since it was a real (no answers supplied) exam before an official FCC
examiner it did show accomplishment. Hams of the day often listed it on
employment applications alongside their commercial licenses.

Also applications for college.

Actually the extra cw segments were the most prized,

Only if you are a CW DXer. And even before the change, by gentlemans
agreement the bottom of the CW band was left for DXers and casual CW
operation was higher, pretty much like now.

so the cw requirement made sense

IMO the only justification for the code test (at that time) was for possible
emergency use. As an example a ship in distress, since many ships were still
using CW at the time. But other than that making a ham take a special code
test made about as much sense as making him take a special soldering test..
That was finally recognized recently... *

There were three reasons for it back then:

The first reason was the ITU treaty, which required Morse Code
testing.

The second reason was that the FCC considered Morse Code skill to be
part of what it meant to be a qualified radio amateur, particularly
one that had full HF privileges. That view has changed since the 1970s
but it was a big thing to them in those days.

The third reason was that before the 1980s amateur radio was quite
different in terms of equipment and mode/band choices. There were no
WARC bands (30, 17 and 12 meters) before 1979, and 160 was full of
LORAN and hams only had limited use of it. The only data mode was
RTTY, done with big heavy electromechanical teletype machines. SSTV
existed but required special equipment. So most hams on HF used either
Morse Code, SSB or AM. SSB and AM use a lot more spectrum than Morse
Code so the total carrying capacity of the HF ham bands would be much
less if everybody used voice.

As far as techs are concerned... Well I knew quite a few techs who were
very much into home brew radios. *

As it should be. The Tech license was supposed to be for technical use, not
just another operators license. But of course that was a laugh. Most Techs
bought their equipment and set up shop on the nearest local repeater...

That depends on what era you're talking about. The Technician was
created as part of the 1951 restructuring, and originally did not
include 6 or 2 meters. Repeaters did not become common in ham radio
until the 1970s.

73 de Jim, N2EY