On Feb 6, 1:57 pm, wrote:

snippage

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.

The real kick for the modes was the sound card operations. What once
took a good bit of space and effort, is now done with a computer and
some software.

It never fails to amaze me when I think about my station laptop having
so much ability. There seems to be about a bazillion digital modes
now, and SSTV rtty and the other legacy modes.

In fact I'd say the biggest drawback is that to use the soundcard
modes is simple enough that it can impede the appreciation of the
power.

For instance, I used Ham Radio Deluxe and Digital Master 780 on my
laptop.

Let's say I'm doing some PSK on 20 meters. I see a fellow operating
Olivia mode a little up from me on the bandscope. I switch to his
mode, and the software detects his callsign, I tell it I want to do a
QSO with him, and the computer looks up and displays it in the "pre-
log" window. Then it goes out to QRZ.com, and looks up the Op's
information. We type out our QSO, and maybe do a little rag chewing.
After we sign, my computer uploads the QSO info to eQSL.

All that time, I've been monitoring the DX clusters, have a grayline
display and complete control of the rig from my laptop (I do have a
second display because that is a lot of stuff for one screen!

That's easy to spoil a person that way.

Then again, sometimes it's fun to power up an old hollow state
Heathkit.


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.

I just don't think there would be that much purpose to tube technology
in a modern day test. That to me seems more of a thing that you learn
as part of a niche you find to your liking.

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.

Multiple choice is pretty much accepted practice in most fields also.


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.

First you define what you want to do. There are many possibilities.

Some want to make things easier, some want to make things more
difficult.

Much of this is coupled to how people see the tests in the first
place. If we want to make them more difficult in order to serve as a
sort of filtering mechanism, we can put in questions that involve a
lot of calculations, then move the decimal points around or make them
very close.

I'd never suggest this, but I took a test once that was incredibly
ambiguous. One question was multiple choice "What temperature does
solder melt at?"

But in the end, I like the idea of an easy starting point, then
becoming more difficult as you move up. I think that in a historical
context, we're doing what we have been doing for a long time now.

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'm of the opinion that the tests are not far from where they should
be. I wouldn't mind the Extra being more difficult, but that's because
I had a lot of fun studying for mine.

- 73 de Mike N3LI -