wrote:
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!

(disagreement accepted(grin)!)

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.

I guess I'd argue that there's still a BIG technological split between
wh at was required to keep a transmitter on-channel (and without spurs)
even in the early 1950s vs. what's necessary today. I *know* I once
inadvertentl y called CQ on 21.6MHz because of a mistake tuning a
HW-16, that was in the early 1970s. That mistake would be impossible
with today's amateur gear.

The licensed operator was necessary through the 1970s. Today, speaking
s trictly from the standpoint of avoiding ruinous interference to
economically-important services, my argument is that that's no longer
the case.

(there may be other reasons for maintaining the licensing requirement
-- to prevent the amateur service from being hijacked into a different
purpose, to ensure there's a "workbench" for experimentation with new
circuits and /or means of transmission, etc...)

�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.

I stand somewhat corrected. The last Philadelphia Arbitrons on
http://ww w.radio-info.com/site/markets/grid/philadelphia show WBEB-FM
exceeded a 10% rating. It was however the only Philadelphia station to
do so. KYW was a fairly distant second, (well below 10%) and WHYY got
less than half KYW's numbers. (not that WHYY did badly -- they beat
three high-powered commer cial FMs and Philadelphia's other 50,000-watt
AM station, and if they didn't have to split the public radio audience
with WRTI they'd have been in 5th place.)

But I'd stick to my guns to argue that if KYW went off the air, more
than 90% of Philadelphians wouldn't immediately notice, and probably
wouldn't notice for some time.

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.

That's certainly a good reason for us to still want amateur licensing
exams!

But I would suggest the vast majority of the problems resulting from CB
w ere limited to CB spectrum or other spectrum of little economic
value.

Even much of the RFI was not the CBers' fault (even if they were
operatin g at illegally high power); often the cheap consumer gear
would have reacted the same way to a perfectly legal 28MHz licensed
amateur transmission.

==========
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.

Really I don't think it's *possible* to objectively prove whether the
exa ms are easier or not... have a group of people take both exams &
see how the pass rates compare? -- but most EE graduates today have no
idea how a vac uum tube works (and would find it impossible to pass the
1940 exam) while no EE graduate in 1940 had ever heard of a transistor.
(and would find it i mpossible to pass the 2010 exam)

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).

though if you have four choices for each question, if you don't know
your stuff you're not going to be able to guess enough right to pass.
It's more about providing the proper selection of wrong answers!

You could argue that essay questions in part test the wrong skill -
your ability to cause someone else to understand the concept, not your
understanding of the concept itself.

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.

I can certainly concur with this.

Let me make it clear, I'm not trying to argue that we shouldn't have
lice nse exams! I'm suggesting that *the FCC* doesn't really care if
we have exams -- *the amateur community* certainly feels we need them,
and I thin k the amateur community is right.

I think there are two keys to effective exams: - The largest possible
question pool. Make it impossible to simply memor ize the
questions/answers. - Careful selection of the multiple-choice answers.
Provide wrong answer s that are close enough to the right answer that
applicants have to know the concept to find the right onw.

--

Doug Smith W9WI
Pleasant View, TN EM66