On Feb 6, 10:54�am, wrote:
I might argue that this entire thread is to some degree
ignoring
technical advances and economic realities.

I must respectfully disagree!

Speaking strictly of broadcasting, when the industry
got its start
there were no PLL frequency control systems, locked to a
precisely-controlled 10MHz oscillator. �
There wasn't even crystal
control. �If you didn't have a skilled engineer,
temperature changes
and physical movement of the antenna would
have your station running
all over the dial.

That's true for the 1920s, when broadcasting was brand-new and there
was little regulation controlling it.

But by the 1930s the technical and regulatory problems had all pretty
much been solved from the standpoint of which station gets which
frequency, transmitter standards, etc. Crystal control dates from the
mid-1920s and by the mid- 1930s was pretty much required for broadcast
and other fixed-frequency commercial transmitters. It was becoming
common even among Depression-era amateurs.

Today, an amateur can, in a few minutes,
build a crystal-controlled
oscillator that will stay on-channel
with no attention whatsoever.
Virtually all of our neighbors make daily
use of portable UHF
transmitters, in all temperatures and
locations, without any concerns
about off-frequency operation, and
with no attention whatsoever.
(usually they aren't even turned on/off)

That was true more than 60 years ago, too.

Yet the Licensed Operator lived on, because the need for them was well
understood.

�And at the same time, with
media players, cable TV, and the
Internet, radio is simply no longer
the critical lifeline it was in the 1930s.
�The most popular radio
station in town could go off the air
for hours and 90% of the
population wouldn't even notice.

I think that depends on where you are and how you define the "most
popular station". Certainly here in Philly, if KYW (all
news/weather/traffic/sports) or WHYY (public radio) were to go silent
for even a few minutes, there would be a lot of questions.

Of course a big market like the Delaware Valley has many stations on
the air, so there are many choices. I suspect that even in the 1920s
this was true, because AM BC listeners weren't limited to just the
local station. Particularlyafter dark.

In fact, the performance of many of those early sets is quite
remarkable when they're in good shape and connected to a good outdoor
antenna, as was the usual practice back in the 1920s and 1930s.

============
I would suggest the goal of amateur licensing
has also changed over the
years.

Just as with commercial broadcasting,
in the early days the improper
operation of an amateur transmitter could
easily cause massive
interference, even outside the amateur
service. �Much important traffic
(especially international traffic) was
handled by radio and fragile to
interference. �If amateurs were to
exist, it would be critical that
they know how to confine their
transmissions to their own bands.
Commercially-built transmitters were rare,
and even when they did exist
a skilled operator was necessary to keep
them on-channel. �

All true, but that's not the only reason for operator licensing. By the
end of WW2 if not earlier, amateur transmitters that were pretty
foolproof were in common use.

Tough
technical examinations were necessary
to ensure against interference.

But the examinations even in those days weren't really very "tough".
They only covered the basics. Even before the Novice license was
created in 1951, teenagers and younger were licensed amateurs in the
USA. For example, W3OVV (now SK) earned her Class B license in 1948 at
the age of nine years.

Today, it's darned near impossible to
radiate a signal outside amateur
spectrum unless you want to.

I disagree! There are lots of ways to do it.

For one thing, amateurs are still allowed to use older equipment and
build their own. So they need at least some basic understanding of how
their rigs work.

Even the most modern sets can have some odd behaviors, such as
transmitting out-of-band if the supply voltage is too low. (PLL loses
lock). If a ham doesn't know to use heavy-enough wire to connect the
rig to the power supply, all kinds of trouble could result, yet the rig
receives perfectly.

�I would suggest the FCC would probably be
fine with lifting the requirement for licensing examinations
altogether! - really, we're not
likely to cause interference to anyone
except ourselves.

The only reason we still have amateur licensing exams is
because *we* want them.

I think not.

First off, they are still required by international regulations. Note
that the CEPT folks recently changed their rules so that only Advanced
and Extra US hams get full reciprocalprivileges.

Second, and more important, is the connection of licensing, control and
responsibility.

Back in 1958, the FCC expanded the Citizens Radio Service to include 23
channels on 11 meters. They wrote specific rules to govern it,
including the use of radio sets that were pretty much foolproof. No
tuning, no tuneup, just select the channel, set volume and maybe
squelch, push the button and talk. (Yes, some had tunable receivers but
that was a cost-saving thing).

The "license" that was required entailed filling out a form and sending
it in with the required fee. No exams of any kind.

At first 11 meter cb was pretty well behaved, but within a dozen years
it was out of control. By the early 1970s, the rules had almost no
effect on cb users. Superpower, failure to ID, deliberate interference,
operation off of the allocated channels, RFI, use of radio to evade law
enforcement and much more were common.

I was a ham back then, and I remember how common it was for a ham to be
blamed for TVI/RFI caused by cb users with "linears" that weren't.

The problems continue to this day. Just listen to the low end of 10
meters when the band is even moderately open.

Why did cb change for the worse the way it did within a few years of
its creation, yet Amateur Radio, which has been around a lot longer and
had much less enforcement, stay so well behaved, avoid such a change?

I'd say that the differences in licensing requirements had a lot to do
with it. So did the concept of the licensed, skilled operator.

============
I would also suggest the licensing exam has not
become *easier* over
the years, only *different*.

I disagree, but the only way to really know would be to get hold of
actual exams from the various times and compare them.

Maybe to put it a bit
differently, we've
gone from deeply testing a few areas of knowledge,
to shallowly testing
a wide variety of knowledge.

That much I agree with!

But the test *methods* have also changed, and that makes a big
difference.

For example, answering an essay question is a completely different
thing from answering multiple-choice because with multiple choice you
*know* the correct answer is there; you just have to determine which
one it is. One cannot guess their way to a correct answer on an essay
or show-your-work problem, but with a multiple-choice question that has
4 choices there's a 25% chance of a right answer even if the person
knows nothing about the subject and chooses randomly. (The
multiple-choice SATs avoid this by assigning negative points for wrong
answers).

When we were shut down for WW2, we had
one MF band, four HF bands, and
two VHF bands. �We had three legal emission
modes - CW, AM, and FM.
Repeaters & satellites were unheardof, unless you
were Arthur C. Clarke.

It's a minor point, but the history was a little different. For
accuracy, here's what I found from the literature of those days:

The US amateur bands in 1941 were 160, 80, 40, 20, 10, 5, 2-1/2 and
1-1/4 meters. Frequencies above 30 Mc. were referred to as "UHF" or
"the ultra-highs" back then, and above 300 Mc. wasn't really regulated
at all.

Amateurs back then were mostly using CW or AM, but a handful used SSB
(considered a variant of AM), FM, and MCW. There were amateurs using
duplex on 5 meters, and even a repeater or two. Model control was
permitted as well, and had been used by hams since the 1930s.

While many if not most amateurs had only simple HF receivers and
transmitters, a few had quite sophisticated stations, including things
like VFO (then called "ECO"), remote control, double-conversion
superhet receivers with crystal filters, rotary beam directional
antennas, andmuch more.

Today, we have one MF band, nine HF bands, and four
commonly-used
VHF/UHF bands. �If you count all "digital" modes
as a single mode, I
still count six emission modes in common use on HF.

Sure - but most of them were in use by hams 50 years ago:

CW and AM date from the beginnings of Amateur Radio - 1920s at
thelatest.

SSB was used by a few hams in the 1930s and really took off after 1948

FM (called NBFM) was popular in the late 1940s as well, to the point
that manufactured receivers and transmitters sometimes had optional
NBFM adapters available.

SSTV was developed by hams in the late 1950s.

RTTY was authorized for US hams in the late 1940s and was reasonably
popular considering the cost of the machines and additional equipment/
supplies required back then.

There's a lot of ham gear from 40, 50, even 60 years ago that can be
used on the air today and the ham on the other end of the QSO will not
know you aren't using a "modern" rig unless you mention it. Even some
1930s equipment can be made to work so well that it is
indistinguishable from current equipment.

-----

The other night I had an interesting and fun QSO with a ham in North
Carolina. He was using a Flex 5000 SDR; I was using a homebrew all-
hollow-state transceiver of my own design and construction. The mode
was CW, the band was 80 meters. Neither of us could tell thedifference.

That's a very good thing.


There's a lot more to know about. �If we still expected
amateur
applicants to be able to sketch the diagram of a
transmitter or figure
the proper biasing of a common-cathode amplifier
or explain how to keep
an oscillator from drifting, it would take days to write the
exam and
months to grade it.

I don't see how that would be the case.

But it's a moot point. The FCC is extremely unlikely to change from the
current test methods, if for no other reason than cost.

So the question is, given the test method of multiple choice exams, how
do we tailor the question pools to do the best possible job? We hams
have an element of control, because anyone can submit questions to the
QPC for inclusion in the pools. And there's no upper limit to the pool
size.

Of course a question that requires differential calculus to solve
probably isn't going to be accepted. Nor is one that focuses on
technologies not used much in Amateur Radio. But a lot can be added.

73 de Jim, N2EY