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The Theory of Licensing
Discussion of US Amateur Radio license requirements elsewhere got me
thinking that a discussion of the whole subject might be interesting. For me, the place to start is the historical beginnings. The following is my take on events with respect to US Amateur Radio. Before 1912, there was very little regulation of radio by the US government. The whole technology was so new and revolutionary that it took a while for the need of regulation to become apparent. Various bills were introuced before Congress but not much changed until the Titanic disaster showed the need for better regulation in several areas. Since the main commercial use of radio at the time was for maritime communications, the effects of that tragedy were widespread. After 1912, the Federal government took a very active role in the regulation of radio. Their solution was licensing of both operators and of stations, regulations establishing different radio services and enforcing technical/operating standards, and the issuance of callsigns to positively identify transmitting starions. Those in charge knew, understood and supported the concept of the skilled, knowledgeable, licensed Radio Operator in all radio services. In some services the required skills and knowledge would be mostly technical, in others they would be mostly operational, and in most a mixture of operational and technical, but in all cases the licensed Radio Operator was indispensable. Thus there were Amateur licenses, Commercial Radiotelephone licenses and Commercial Radiotelegraph licenses. There were station licenses and operator licenses. There were several operator license classes, serious test requirements. As technology developed, and a whole flock of endorsements for things like radar were created. Some of this did not come easily. During the 1920s there was a considerable amount of debate over which government level and agency should regulate radio, and how new technologies such as broadcasting, which was unknown in 1912, should be handled. There was also the evolution of world radio treaties to set up standards betweennations. Through all this the concept of Amateur Radio evolved, in large part due to the efforts of those such as H.P. Maxim, Charles Stewart, K.B. Warner and many others, They faced considerable opposition, because there were many who would have liked Radio to be a strictly commercial or government technology. For example, the 1912 regulations limited amateurs to 1000 watts input and waves no longer than 200 meters, and required licensing of all transmitting stations and all operators. Many simply left the air because they felt the new rules were too restrictive, but others pressed on to see what could be done. One may wonder why the regulations didn't just outlaw amateur radio entirely. I think there were three reasons: First were the efforts of Maxim and the others, testifying before Congress and committees as to the need for Amateur Radio. Second was the general feeling during the Progressive Era that the average person should have at least some access to radio transmitting. Third was the widely-held idea that the low power of 1 kW and the short waves below 200 meters were essentially useless for commercial purposes, so why not banish the amateurs to them? A similar situation developed after WW1 ended, and again it took a considerable effort to get amateurs back on the air. One added factor in 1919 was that thousands of amateurs had proved the worth of their self-training in radio during the war. Efforts to secure the place of Amateur Radio in the regulations continued through the 1920s, culminating with the 1927 treaty regulations that recognized Amateur Radio as a separate and distinct radio service, with its own bands and rules guaranteed by treaty as well as national laws. Licensing of all radio transmitters and operators had some far- reaching effects. For example, licensing of commercial operators created not only a lot of jobs but a whole profession. Every radio service needed licensed Radio Operators of various levels for various tasks. Whether it was routine transmitter checks at a daytime-only AM BC station, running a vital maritime shore station, or any of dozens of other jobs, the licensed Radio Operator was an absolute necessity, by law. And these became pretty good jobs, with decent pay andbenefits. Someone could have a Ph.D. in EE, the Nobel Prize in physics, years of military radio experience, etc., etc., but without the proper License they were not a Radio Operator and could not legally do any of the Radio Operator's jobs. Amateur Radio was often the first step in the licensing process of commercial operators, though not all commercial operators started outas hams. The end result was that for several decades a commercial license of the right type, plus a high-school-equivalent education and a clean record, were practically a Golden Ticket to a decent-paying career. This doesn't mean all the jobs or the licenses were easy to do or get, nor that a Radio Operator didn't have to know his/her stuff. Just that it was a way for folks who knew something about Radio to get a decent living without a college degree and without low-priced competition, both domestic and "offshore". At the same time, none of the licenses, commercial or amateur, required anything close to the knowledge of an four-year EE degree. Nor were they meant to. Even the military followed suit. For example the US Navy had various classes of Radioman, each requiring a considerable amount of training, experience, and proof of skills and knowledge. Another result of all this licensing was that the government didn't really have to do all that much enforcement. Licensing produced a culture where respect for and compliance with the regulations was taken very seriously, and nobody, commercial or amateur, wanted to risk the loss of an operator or station license. They were too hard to get in the first place, and even more difficult to replace if revoked. It was a pretty good system - maybe too good. The problem was that the Captains of Industry didn't like paying for all those licensed Radio Operators, nor their benefits, for what seemed to them to be simple, easy jobs. Unionized or not, the License requirements meant the Captains couldn't hire just anybody for the jobs, nor could they combine certain jobs to reduce the head count, nor could they neglect doing certain things to reduce expenses. Nor could they export the work. So the Captains of Industry got the regulators, and the regulations,changed. Over a number of years they succeeded in all but eliminating the concept of the skilled, knowledgeable, *licensed* Radio Operator. Saved lots of money and aggravation. All we have left now are pieces of the old rules and requirements. Some might say that the new technologies no longer required specialized Radio Operators, and in some cases that's probably true. But I think the dismantling of commercial Radio Operator licensing was more about the deregulation for the sake of bigger profits rather than the lack of need for operators. And since they did it for commercial services, the same concepts were applied to the Amateur Radio Service. But the Amateur Radio Service is still all about the technically knowledgeable, operationally skilled Radio Operator. Or at least I think it should be. 73 de Jim, N2EY |
The Theory of Licensing
On Jan 31, 8:19 pm, wrote:
Over a number of years they succeeded in all but eliminating the concept of the skilled, knowledgeable, *licensed* Radio Operator. Saved lots of money and aggravation. All we have left now are pieces of the old rules and requirements. Some might say that the new technologies no longer required specialized Radio Operators, and in some cases that's probably true. But I think the dismantling of commercial Radio Operator licensing was more about the deregulation for the sake of bigger profits rather than the lack of need for operators. This part of the history touches upon a issue that I think fits under the "law of unintended consequenses." I came into Amateur radio as a digital guy who wanted to learn about radio This may give me a different perspective.. A lot of Hams, especially those who have been Hams for a long time, seem to inadvertently downplay just what knowledge is needed to be an effective communicator in wireless. You see this in their comments about some supposed ease in getting a license, among others. I'm here to tell you that the art and science of making a communications link between randomly "chosen" areas, and all the electronics that that entails, is a matter that takes some serious education and/or experience. Yet time after time, the systems that we come up with just fail. And the problem is always that the best laid plans to take the skilled operator out of the link fail. The reason is pretty simple. The effort to remove the decisions that an educated operator would make add infrastructure to the system. When the wheels com off, the infrastructure fails. The same forces that destroy, flood, and freeze the victims of disaster also have an effect on the infrastructure that is in place to rescue them. On the commercial radio operator demise part, I'd have to say that you want to listen in my area to hear the results. One company owns all the radio stations in my area, with the exception of the Public station.. The only one I bother to listen to other than the Public station is the local ESPN sports station. They regularly go off the air for long periods of time, play the satellite feed message, or my favorite, play two feeds at once. The funny thing is that the most listened to station in the area is guess who, the public station. They still have engineers, they still monitor their output, and they actually take input from their listeners. That deregulation, that getting rid of skilled employees, did it work when we have 8 or 9 stations that are horribly undependable, and most everyone, even people who hate to admit it, listen to the public radio station? - 73 de Mike N3LI - |
The Theory of Licensing
On Feb 3, 12:43�am, "Michael J. Coslo" wrote:
A lot of Hams, especially those who have been Hams for a long time, seem to inadvertently downplay just what knowledge is needed to be an effective communicator in wireless. I don't think that's just a long-time-ham thing. You see this in their comments about some supposed ease in getting a license, among others. I think there's a big difference between what it takes to get a USA amateur license and what it takes to be an effective communicator, even if we're just talking about Amateur Radio. The license tests are just the beginning; there's a lot of practical stuff not on the license tests. I'm here to tell you that the art and science of making a communications link between randomly "chosen" areas, and all the electronics that that entails, is a matter that takes some serious education and/or experience. I think that depends on what resources are available and what the actual conditions and communications needs are. For example, with modern satellite communications, a news team can be flown into a disaster area (such as Haiti) and get an on-the-spot report out of the disaster area in short order. Getting communication from specific people in the disaster area to others inside or outside the disaster area is a completely different thing. Some folks may not consider "health and welfare" messages to be of vital importance, but when you have loved ones in the disaster area and haven't heard from them in days, a simple "We're OK!" message ispriceless. Plus what is seen on TV isn't always an accurate picture. On another forum I read about the devastation of Hurricane Ike being only just behind Hurricane Katrina in dollars. But Katrina got far more media play than Ike, over a much longer time. And the Katrina coverage focused on New Orleans even though the Mississippi coastline was harder hit. (This isn't a claim of bias or wrongdoing; reporters can't be evenly distributed everywhere. But it is reason to take TV reports with a grain of salt). Yet time after time, the systems that we come up with just fail. And the problem is always that the best laid plans to take the skilled operator out of the link fail. The reason is pretty simple. The effort to remove the decisions that an educated operator would make add infrastructure to the system. When the wheels com off, the infrastructure fails. The same forces that destroy, flood, and freeze the victims of disaster also have an effect on the infrastructure that is in place to rescue them. As Commander Montgomery Scott used to say: "The more complicated you make the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain". Or similar. The problem is cost; the skilled operator costs more resources than the equipment that replaces him/her. And as the availability (in the technical sense) of the equipment improves, the apparent need for operators goes down. On the commercial radio operator demise part, I'd have to say that you want to listen in my area to hear the results. One company owns all the radio stations in my area, with the exception of the Public station.. To diverge for a moment, that's another example of the government taking a hands-off approach when formerly they had been active in regulation. It used to be that there were all kinds of limits on how many broadcast stations the same corporate entity could own in a given market. The idea was that no market should be dominated, let alone monopolized, by a single network or company. This idea and the regulations to enforce it were in place for decades, but a few years ago were quietly tossed aside, resulting in what you have in your area. The only one I bother to listen to other than the Public station is the local ESPN sports station. They regularly go off the air for long periods of time, play the satellite feed message, or my favorite, play two feeds at once. AM or FM? The funny thing is that the most listened to station in the area is guess who, the public station. Not unusual - market forces at work... Here in Philly we have at least two: WHYY and WXPN They still have engineers, they still monitor their output, and they actually take input from their listeners. That deregulation, that getting rid of skilled employees, did it work when we have 8 or 9 stations that are horribly undependable, and most everyone, even people who hate to admit it, listen to the public radio station? Depends on how you define "did it work". From a pure profit standpoint, all that matters is the return on investment. To the station's owners, the additional cost of improving the availability of the signal and the content of the programming may not result in enough of an increased return (of cash). But the public station measures "return on investment" differently. I think Amateur Radio does, too. 73 de Jim, N2EY |
The Theory of Licensing
From: "Michael J. Coslo"
Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 00:43:46 EST Subject: The Theory of Licensing On Jan 31, 8:19 pm, wrote: Yet time after time, the systems that we come up with just fail. And the problem is always that the best laid plans to take the skilled operator out of the link fail. The reason is pretty simple. The effort to remove the decisions that an educated operator would make add infrastructure to the system. When the wheels com off, the infrastructure fails. The same forces that destroy, flood, and freeze the victims of disaster also have an effect on the infrastructure that is in place to rescue them. To me, that is a confusing paragraph. As far as I've seen in more urban areas, the "infrastructure" survives quite well and has been proven to do so in some very serious events. That takes planning by "skilled, knowledgeable" managers. I'm talking about the telephone infrastructure, the public safety infrastructure, and even the broadcast infrastructure. If an emergency is totally catastrophic to eliminate some "infrastructure," it will also eliminate the amateur as a potential savior. I've seen, over TV, some rather catastrophic emergencies, brought to everyone by the news media of several networks, including showing in the background the communications vehicles and equipment of various National Guard units (source: flooding of rivers beginning in the Dakotas). Add to that the First Gulf War bombing in Iraq done by a CNN news team, none identified as amateur licensees. There has been a significant improvement in 'radio' technology that does not require the old-style "skill and knowledge" alluded to by the first thread author. For example, during that First Gulf War bombing, voices of the journalists were coming over the Iraqi telephone infrastructure. When that was damaged during the bombing they continued on via satellite using equipment they had with them. Saddam Hussein was even interviewed live by one of the CNN journalists during that bombing. By the way, the first thread author's text may be viewed almost verbatim on e-ham.net Forums, Licensing, under "A Modest Proposal" dated 31 January 2010. My reply to him follows there but there was no counterpoint to my reply. shrug 73, Len K6LHA |
The Theory of Licensing
On Feb 4, 9:29 am, K6LHA wrote:
From: "Michael J. Coslo" Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2010 00:43:46 EST Subject: The Theory of Licensing On Jan 31, 8:19 pm, wrote: Yet time after time, the systems that we come up with just fail. And the problem is always that the best laid plans to take the skilled operator out of the link fail. The reason is pretty simple. The effort to remove the decisions that an educated operator would make add infrastructure to the system. When the wheels com off, the infrastructure fails. The same forces that destroy, flood, and freeze the victims of disaster also have an effect on the infrastructure that is in place to rescue them. To me, that is a confusing paragraph. As far as I've seen in more urban areas, the "infrastructure" survives quite well and has been proven to do so in some very serious events. That takes planning by "skilled, knowledgeable" managers. I'm talking about the telephone infrastructure, the public safety infrastructure, and even the broadcast infrastructure. If an emergency is totally catastrophic to eliminate some "infrastructure," it will also eliminate the amateur as a potential savior. Its a matter of system complexity. The more complex the structure, the more likely the failure. In our area, we have a 10 year old system that doesn't work under normal conditions, much less emergency ones They are trying to replace it now, but we spent a whole lot of money and got very little for it. It was touted as a great thing when it was installed. And it wasn't inexpensive or put together I've seen, over TV, some rather catastrophic emergencies, brought to everyone by the news media of several networks, including showing in the background the communications vehicles and equipment of various National Guard units (source: flooding of rivers beginning in the Dakotas). Add to that the First Gulf War bombing in Iraq done by a CNN news team, none identified as amateur licensees. Most very respectfully Len, I now understand the confusion. The amateurs are not there to provide news via satellite, or to do television shows. We're not part of public safety or broadcast stations. We're there to pass along communications behind the scene. Where this shows up is in the how of our work. It isn't glamorous, to be sure. But in most cases, a satellite reporter from some disaster scene is going to be there to give a news report. Not so likely a request for say, shovels and toilet paper. It's all part of post disaster work. Broadcast stations are in a similar state. Their part is more likely to give people info about avoiding the areas in question, or evacuation routes to follow. Amateurs wouldn't be doing that, because there isn't a receiving end. Most everyone has a Television and a AM/ FM radio. Not so many have a 2 meter radio. So the typical placement might be as such: Some place has an emergency, let's say a modern day version of the New Madrid earthquake. We'll likely be looking at some different teams heading into the area. There will be lots of first responders, like National guard, firefighters, Medical personnel, and the like. There will probably be some Hams also. News teams will be there. Each group will be doing it's thing. The Hams will likely be passing along messages for the sort of thing I mentioned above, another part will be getting messages to the outside world about "We're still around". It's possible that the cell system functioned perfectly in your area, but typically the post disaster scenario has been one in which everyone is calling to see if their relatives are doing okay. If the cell towers still have electricity, they get clogged quickly, if they don't, their backup systems go down after a while. While we may communicate via cell if it is working, I don't know of anyone who has cell phones in their disaster comm plans. So anyhow, I think you might be mistaking other groups issues, like the broadcasting and newscasting industries with the job of setting up radio stations and passing along messages for health and welfare. Hams aren't usually on the front lines, they're just performing a part in the process. And yes, a large part of why they are doing it is both that the infrastructure that might be used otherwise fails, and that while it might look effortless, there is knowledge that ends up being a big help in getting the message through that has been lost by the idea that the communicator only need to know how to talk, and that technology can fill in for the missing knowledge. - 73 de Mike N3LI - |
The Theory of Licensing
On Feb 4, 8:17 am, wrote:
To diverge for a moment, that's another example of the government taking a hands-off approach when formerly they had been active in regulation. It used to be that there were all kinds of limits on how many broadcast stations the same corporate entity could own in a given market. The idea was that no market should be dominated, let alone monopolized, by a single network or company. This idea and the regulations to enforce it were in place for decades, but a few years ago were quietly tossed aside, resulting in what you have in your area. The only one I bother to listen to other than the Public station is the local ESPN sports station. They regularly go off the air for long periods of time, play the satellite feed message, or my favorite, play two feeds at once. AM or FM? It's an AM station. The funny thing is that the most listened to station in the area is guess who, the public station. Not unusual - market forces at work... Here in Philly we have at least two: WHYY and WXPN They still have engineers, they still monitor their output, and they actually take input from their listeners. That deregulation, that getting rid of skilled employees, did it work when we have 8 or 9 stations that are horribly undependable, and most everyone, even people who hate to admit it, listen to the public radio station? Depends on how you define "did it work". From a pure profit standpoint, all that matters is the return on investment. To the station's owners, the additional cost of improving the availability of the signal and the content of the programming may not result in enough of an increased return (of cash). From what I can gather, the post-regulation version of radio stations is that you apply the notion of mass production to the issue. In this method, you buy up as many stations as possible, and minimally staff them. Then instead of locally produced content, you have satellite feeds. Advertisement then is mostly national type stuff - I think that's picked up from satellite also. I've heard Canadian public service announcements on our local stations. On our local sports station, there is maybe 15 percent local advertisements, and 1 semi locally produced show. It's been an unexpected boon for the public station. These local places still need to advertise, so they are throwing money at the public station. Then they get a mention, a thanks, and it turns out that the public radio listeners will support these businesses and let them know why. The great irony is that when the NPR was largely removed from the public dole, it was done with the intention that it would kill public radio. Now after all these years, commercial radio is in the pits, and people are supporting public radio directly. Back on topic, I'm firmly convinced that Amateur radio will serve as a sort of an island for technically inclined people, while we sort our way through this time of celebrity as role model, and the reality tv mode that so many people seem to be in thrall to. We now celebrate the mundane. I'm more interested in the exceptional, and I try to show as many people as I know that to be technical is not a bad thing. That's why I let everyone know that the hockey playing, loud motorcycle driving guy is also full of that geeky goodness. There is an alternative. - 73 de Mike N3LI - |
The Theory of Licensing
On 2/3/2010 12:43 AM, Michael J. Coslo wrote:
On Jan 31, 8:19 pm, wrote: Over a number of years they succeeded in all but eliminating the concept of the skilled, knowledgeable, *licensed* Radio Operator. [snip] On the commercial radio operator demise part, I'd have to say that you want to listen in my area to hear the results. One company owns all the radio stations in my area, with the exception of the Public station.. The only one I bother to listen to other than the Public station is the local ESPN sports station. They regularly go off the air for long periods of time, play the satellite feed message, or my favorite, play two feeds at once. The funny thing is that the most listened to station in the area is guess who, the public station. They still have engineers, they still monitor their output, and they actually take input from their listeners. That deregulation, that getting rid of skilled employees, did it work when we have 8 or 9 stations that are horribly undependable, and most everyone, even people who hate to admit it, listen to the public radio station? Ah, but you _CAN_ hear all the "undependable" stations, right? Are they still able to play whatever they choose, free from interference caused by other stations? By brother, W3TDH, is fond of saying that "The government's job is to protect you from your neighbor's folly, not your own." So long as each station is within it's assigned channel and producing acceptable signals, the rest is a commercial matter that the public will decide indue course. This _IS_ related to Amateur Radio: if my neighbor complains of RFI, and I'm sure that my station isn't at fault, I get to tell him to buy better equipment. I'd always do what I could to eliminate the problem first, by recommending filters, etc., but in the end the government protects _me_ from my _neighbor's_ folly when he bought cheap carp at a discount. Bill, W1AC -- (Filter QRM for direct replies) |
The Theory of Licensing
On Feb 4, 12:45�pm, "Michael J. Coslo" wrote:
The amateurs are not there to provide news via satellite, or to do television shows. We're not part of public safety or broadcast stations. We're there to pass along communications behind the scene. Where this shows up is in the how of our work. It isn't glamorous, to be sure. But in most cases, a satellite reporter from some disaster scene is going to be there to give a news report. Not so likely a request for say, shovels and toilet paper. It's all part of post disaster work. All true. There's also the fact that Amateur Radio emergency communication really is "When All Else Fails". What I mean is that if I see a situation on the road which requires police, fire and/or ambulance help, I'll first try the cell phone, not the 2 meter autopatch. If there's a hurricane, ice storm, etc., and email still works, most folks (including me) will use it. Etc. Where Amateur Radio steps in is when those things don't work, or are inadequate. Of course when Amateur Radio really is needed and doing the job, the hams involved aren't going to be making sure they get on camera. Broadcast stations are in a similar state. Their part is more likely to give people info about avoiding the areas in question, or evacuation routes to follow. Amateurs wouldn't be doing that, because there isn't a receiving end. Most everyone has a Television and a AM/ FM radio. Not so many have a 2 meter radio. Not only that, but broadcasting to the general public isn't the job of Amateur Radio. a modern day version of the New Madrid earthquake. We'll likely be looking at some different teams heading into the area. There will be lots of first responders, like National guard, firefighters, Medical personnel, and the like. There will probably be some Hams also. News teams will be there. Each group will be doing it's thing. The Hams will likely be passing along messages for the sort of thing I mentioned above, another part will be getting messages to the outside world about "We're still around". Filling in as the need arises and resources are available. 73 de Jim, N2EY |
The Theory of Licensing
On Feb 4, 8:03 pm, Bill Horne wrote:
On 2/3/2010 12:43 AM, Michael J. Coslo wrote: On Jan 31, 8:19 pm, wrote: Over a number of years they succeeded in all but eliminating the concept of the skilled, knowledgeable, *licensed* Radio Operator. [snip] On the commercial radio operator demise part, I'd have to say that you want to listen in my area to hear the results. One company owns all the radio stations in my area, with the exception of the Public station.. The only one I bother to listen to other than the Public station is the local ESPN sports station. They regularly go off the air for long periods of time, play the satellite feed message, or my favorite, play two feeds at once. The funny thing is that the most listened to station in the area is guess who, the public station. They still have engineers, they still monitor their output, and they actually take input from their listeners. That deregulation, that getting rid of skilled employees, did it work when we have 8 or 9 stations that are horribly undependable, and most everyone, even people who hate to admit it, listen to the public radio station? Ah, but you _CAN_ hear all the "undependable" stations, right? Are they still able to play whatever they choose, free from interference caused by other stations? Actually, no. Some go away for while, then come back. One of them is fond of playing two feeds simultaneously. I think the term is "racing to the bottom". In any event, they are not available all the time. The really interesting part (and this isn't regulations, but just a funny contract quirk, is that when the local football team is playing, most of them have the exact same signal. By brother, W3TDH, is fond of saying that "The government's job is to protect you from your neighbor's folly, not your own." So long as each station is within it's assigned channel and producing acceptable signals, the rest is a commercial matter that the public will decide indue course. I mostly agree, at least in principle. My only problem is that some times people will speak of deregulation when they actually mean a shift of resources from one end to another. In the case of commercial radio, we've gone from one monopoly of control by the F.C.C. to just a couple of groups owning almost all the stations. So it's a monopoly of regulations, to a monopoly of something else. The quality of the product has deteriorated immensely. The question is that when a large group of stations fail, and after all who is going to listen to two feeds at the same time, how many will come back? This _IS_ related to Amateur Radio: if my neighbor complains of RFI, and I'm sure that my station isn't at fault, I get to tell him to buy better equipment. I'd always do what I could to eliminate the problem first, by recommending filters, etc., but in the end the government protects _me_ from my _neighbor's_ folly when he bought cheap carp at a discount. I don't usually comment on typos, Bill, but I was scratching my head for a while on this one. Carp? Fish? I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box, and I just had to laugh at my first interpretation. I'm in need of a dope slap..... 8^) - 73 de Mike N3LI - |
The Theory of Licensing
I might argue that this entire thread is to some degree ignoring
technical advances and economic realities. 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. With no TV, MP3 players, or streaming media, if your station *did* drift on top of the Columbia station in the nearby city, half the audience would lose their nightly entertainment. (I note with interest this page: http://jeff560.tripod.com/1923am.html .. Note the large gap in the radio dial -- with no stations between 790 and 870, except for the dozens listed on "833" (actually a wavelength of 360m). These were a separate "class" of station - with looser technical requirements - and contemporary reports suggest they tended to drift among, and sometimes beyond, the 800-860 band, making it a bad idea to assign any other stations there!) If you didn't have a skilled engineer, a valuable business might not be where its customers (or at least its audience) expected to find it -- and it could be interfering with the ability of its competitors to do business. Orderly business required strict regulation. 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) 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. The risk of interference from an unattended transmitter has plummeted, and the economic consequences if it *does* cause interference have also plummeted. To put it a bit differently, I might venture that the ESPN station Mike cited feels the losses they're taking by airing two programs simultaneously or losing spots are less than the cost of hiring a qualified engineer. (you might, on the other hand, argue that if the station were willing to invest in ensuring a proper signal, their advertising revenue might increase by a factor greater than the cost of hiring the engineer. Their management may have decided operating without an engineer makes economic sense, but management isn't always right!) ============= 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. Tough technical examinations were necessary to ensure against interference. Today, it's darned near impossible to radiate a signal outside amateur spectrum unless you want to. 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 would also suggest the licensing exam has not become *easier* over the years, only *different*. 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. 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. 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. 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. -- Doug Smith W9WI Pleasant View, TN EM66 |
The Theory of Licensing
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 |
The Theory of Licensing
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 |
The Theory of Licensing
|
The Theory of Licensing
On Feb 6, 10:54 am, wrote:
snippage To put it a bit differently, I might venture that the ESPN station Mike cited feels the losses they're taking by airing two programs simultaneously or losing spots are less than the cost of hiring a qualified engineer. (you might, on the other hand, argue that if the station were willing to invest in ensuring a proper signal, their advertising revenue might increase by a factor greater than the cost of hiring the engineer. Their management may have decided operating without an engineer makes economic sense, but management isn't always right!) I agree with your assessment. The station was probably bought at a good price, and certainly the national advertisers don't know about the outages, or "doubleages". Local advertisement is appreciated, but probably more of a nuisance than an asset, because once again, they have to pay a person to take care of canvassing and deal with people. And employing a person costs money. I think that the business model is to employ an absolute minimum of people, to get checks that are automatically distributed from HQ from the national advertisers, and to extract profits until it isn't profitable any more - When the tower falls from lack of maintenance, the station is finished. The people involved are not interested in Radio, per se, but in what they can extract from it, until they move on to another thing to generate cash. Its a very short term outlook these folks have. Get it, use it up, leave it. snippage I would also suggest the licensing exam has not become *easier* over the years, only *different*. 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. I would agree here, Doug. The closest I have ever been to old time tests is an old 1957 Ameco test guide for Novice and General. I was a little shocked to find that some of the questions were verbatim to today. Granted there are only so many ways to phrase some of them, but verbatim? Looking over the questions, the Novice was amazingly easy, and the General would have required me to spend an afternoon studying about tube circuits. No difficulty there, at least for my current knowledge level. So yeah, they weren't the questions on the official exam, but I can't help think the books were put out with a very good idea of what the questions would be. So, I believe that the answers have been out there for a lot longer than F.C.C. question pools, Bash books and all the other examples of how things are easier today than they were "when I was a kid". So what is the discrepancy? I think that we sometimes forget that we are always learning. There was a time when I would have had difficulties with the tests. Before I learned what I needed to know, they would have been hard stuff. I suspect that many of the folks who look at today's tests and scoff, remembering how they had to struggle when taking their version of the same class might just be showing how much they've learned in the intervening years. |
The Theory of Licensing
On Feb 7, 2:27 pm, wrote:
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. That depends on the transmitter. And unlike other services, amateurs are allowed and even encouraged todesign, build, repair and modify their own rigs. Any US-licensed amateur witha clean record is trusted by the FCC enough that no formal certification, type-acceptance, documentation, etc. is required to put a transmitter on the air. That applies to any rig an amateur might use, regardless of technology, age, band ormode. Of course nowadays many if not most hams just buy "modern" manufactured plug-and-play equipment. Point is, we're not *required* to do so. 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. The mistake was probably not in tuning. What I suspect happened isthat you had a 40 meter Novice crystal plugged in, and tuned up on 15meters. The 40 meter Novice band back then was 7.150-7.200 MHz, so a crystalnear 7.200 would triple to about 21.6. Such mistakes were common back-when. I suspect they are why so many Novice rigs had the crystal socket right up-front, rather than havinga switch and multiple sockets inside. Some hams would color-code their crystalsto avoid such problems. No amount of skill in tuning nor technical know-how would prevent such a mistake unless the person knew to look at the crystal and multiplyby 3. That mistake would be impossible with today's amateur gear. I disagree! Yes, a rig with no tuneup controls cannot be mistuned, and you can'tleave the wrong crystal in a rig that doesn't use them. But even "modern" rigscan bemisused. For example, many linear amplifiers still require manual tuneup, andmistakes that cause out-of-band spurs are possible. Not all "modern" rigs arelocked out of transmitting precisely at the US amateur band edges, and even thosewhich are can be (and sometimes are) modified to transmit out-of-band forMARS operation. No rig I know of enforces subbands-by-mode or subbands-by-licenseclass. New rigs don't eliminate the possibility of operator error. The oldclassic mistake of wrong-crystal has been replaced by the modern classic of forgot-to-turn-off-the-split-button. Etc. Doesn't mean new hams areany dumber, just that while the details change the basic issues (operator know- how) remain. Most of all, a US amateur license permits the use of older rigs - likethat HW-16. Which brings up a related issue: More than a few newer hams I have encountered got into Amateur Radio *specifically* to use older rigs. Often the rigs they want to use are older than theyare. It's a retro thing, like old cars, vintage clothing, period furniture, etc. Some of us OTs have our hands full on the reflectors keeping them out of trouble. Forexample, more than a few don't realize that the power ratings on older rigs are*DC input*, not RF output. The licensed operator was necessary through the 1970s. Today, speaking strictly from the standpoint of avoiding ruinous interference to economically-important services, my argument is that that's no longer the case. If we were all using certified, no-user-adjustment equipment that all ahd built-in protection against all sorts of troubles, maybe. But that's not Amateur Radio today, and hopefully never will be. While HF may be "old-school" to some, consider that any class of US amateur except Novice has full priveleges above 30 MHz - includingthe operation of high power transmitters on frequencies close to public-safety services. So I think the need continues today. (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...) And just to maintain a semblance of order. I stand somewhat corrected. The last Philadelphia Arbitrons onhttp://www.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. KYW is a special case. Almost nobody listens to KYW continuously. What people do is to push the 1060 button for a specific purpose (trafficon the Schuylkill, weather, school closings, DJIA numbers, etc.) KYW's format is structured so that you know when to listen ("traffic on the twos") That sort of programming is quite different from the kind of radio people listen to for considerable lengths of time, such as WHYY's "Fresh Air" (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.) WHYY also competes with public radio station WXPN. There's also WLEV to the north. 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. Middle of the night, maybe. Drive time - watch out! I previously wrote: 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! Agreed! But I've encountered folks who would like to see the requirements for an amateur license reduced far below what they are today. Somewould even remove the ability of some hams to homebrew and use older rigs. For an example, google "Amateur Radio In the 21st Century" and/or look at the second NCVEC restructuring proposal. (I'll post links ifanybody is interested). But I would suggest the vast majority of the problems resulting from CB were limited to CB spectrum or other spectrum of little economic value. Folks whose TV reception was affected might differ with you. 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. In my experience the cb linears were anything but, and were often the direct cause. Low pass filter? What's that? 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) Couple of points: 1) There's nothing on the exams, old or new, that's even close to EElevel. All of the stuff required for all three current exams would amount to maybe one EE level course. An introductory course at that. 2) Tube and transistor theory aren't showstoppers; the number ofquestions related to them has always been rather small. IMHO there were more ofthem in the past... 3) While a 1940 EE graduate would not understand what a transistorwas, and many 2010 EE graduates wouldn't know what a tube is, if youshowed them the devices and explained their characteristics, they'd be ableto get right answers on all the amateur exam questions involving them in very short order. If anything, the 2010 graduates would have more to learnthan the 1940 ones! 4) It's not really about "easy" vs. 'hard" but about how much thelicensee winds up actually knowing. I think that it's quite possible for a newamateur to pass all the license exams yet be hampered by lack of basicknowledge about Amateur Radio to such an extent that they don't even get on theair, or are severely limited in what they do. 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. True, but you don't need to get them all right. All you need is 75%. While random guessing won't get someone a license, it can help a person with big gaping holes in their knowledge pass. 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. But how can a person be able to cause someone else to understand a concept they don't understand themselves? Particularly when the exact question isn't known beforehand? The old exams weren't all essays, either; they included draw-a-diagram questions, show-your-work calculations, and multiple choice. Historic trivia: About 1940 the FCC went to all-multiple-choice examsas a way of conserving resources at exam sites. Sometime during WW2 they went back to the old system, which continued until about 1960. 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 don't know what FCC thinks on the subject. I do know that FCC has repeatedly refused all proposals to give free no-exam upgrades, and all proposals to eliminate the Extra class. 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. No matter how big you make the pools, *somebody* will probably be able to memorize them well enough to pass without any understanding. But that doesn't really matter, because there comes a point where, if the pools are big enough, it's easier for most people to just learn theconcepts. Careful selection of multiple-choice answers is a good idea, but hasto be done in such a way as to avoid other problems. For example, consider the classic "how long is a 40 meter half-wavedipole made of #12 wire and cut for the middle of the band"? Here's one set of answers: 1) 66 feet2) 132 feet3) 43 feet4) 18 feet And here's another: 1) 66 feet2) 67 feet3) 68 feet4) 65 feet Which one really tests understanding of the concepts? 73 de Jim, N2EY |
The Theory of Licensing
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 - |
The Theory of Licensing
On Feb 8, 10:50 am, "Michael J. Coslo" wrote:
On Feb 6, 10:54 am, wrote: The closest I have ever been to old time tests is an old 1957 Ameco test guide for Novice and General. I was a little shocked to find that some of the questions were verbatim to today. Granted there are only so many ways to phrase some of them, but verbatim? Why not? When the VEC system was created, they didn't start the question pools from scratch. They just took the existing exams and expanded the number of possible questions. Some things haven't changed (40 meters in the USA has been 7.0 to 7.3 since 1929) so why rewrite the questions? Looking over the questions, the Novice was amazingly easy, and the General would have required me to spend an afternoon studying about tube circuits. No difficulty there, at least for my current knowledge level. The Novice was intended to be amazingly easy. Remember that in 1957 the Novice conveyed very limited privileges (small parts of 80, 40 and 15 CW, plus half of 2 meters, voice or CW. 75 watts input, crystal controlonly.) More important, a 1957 Novice license was only good for a year, could not be renewed, and was a once-in-a-lifetime grant. Once a person's Novice expired, they could not get another one, and it was upgrade or leave ham radio. The result was that most Novices were quite motivated... So yeah, they weren't the questions on the official exam, but I can't help think the books were put out with a very good idea of what the questions would be. Of course. But there's a very big difference in having a study guide that indicates the general areas that will be on the test, and one that shows the exact questions and answers that will be used. Remember too that in 1957 the FCC was still using essays, draw-a-diagram and show-your-work calculation questions on the exams for all license classes except Novice. So, I believe that the answers have been out there for a lot longer than F.C.C. question pools, Bash books and all the other examples of how things are easier today than they were "when I was a kid". Sure. But there's a big difference between knowing the answers are outthere, and knowing exactly what the questions will be. So what is the discrepancy? I think that we sometimes forget that we are always learning. There was a time when I would have had difficulties with the tests. Before I learned what I needed to know, they would have been hard stuff. I suspect that many of the folks who look at today's tests and scoff, remembering how they had to struggle when taking their version of the same class might just be showing how much they've learned in the intervening years. Yup. Or how little they knew back-when..... I think another factor is the difficulty-of-access part. Some mayscoff at this, but it was a real issue in the bad old days. What I mean is that, when FCC did the exams at FCC offices, just getting to an exam session could be more involved than the actualtest. For those of us near big cities that had FCC offices, travel was no big deal, but for a hams further out it could be a serious journey. Particularly after FCC increased the "Conditional distance" from 75 to 175 miles in 1964 or 65. FCC exams were usually only given on weekday mornings, too. If you failed an exam, you had to wait 30 days to retest. No CSCEs; if a license required both code and written exams, you had to pass them all at the same test session. The General class ham trying to upgrade to Extra would have to pass 20 wpm receiving, 20 wpm sending, the Advanced written and the Extra written all at the same session. There was also a time when FCC charged fees for the tests. Adjusted for inflation, the fees could be substantial. $9 in the 1960s equatesto about $50 today. For a working people, such limits to access could mean taking a day off work and significant travel time and expense. For a kid in school, such as I was, it meant waiting for an exam day in the summer or on a school holiday that wasn't a federal holiday. What all this added up to was a real incentive not to fail, because retesting was such a bother. So many hams would overlearn the material in order to be absolutely certain of passing on the first go. Very few would go to an exam session just to see if they could do it; the costs were too high. What the old system also did was to make it very difficult for those who had various forms of "test anxiety" which often had nothing to do with their knowledge of the material and everything to do with the cost of getting to the exam session. To many hams of those days, the exams probably seemed a lot "harder" than they really were, because of the pressure. I think it's a very good thing that the VE system has eliminated or reduced those problems. At the same time, I think it's important to recognize the differences and how things have changed. 73 de Jim, N2EY |
The Theory of Licensing
On Feb 8, 8:38 am, Dick Grady AC7EL wrote:
The current multiple-choice system is the most practicable for testing at many sites in the field. My VEC sends to me test question booklets with the required number (35 or 50) and distribution of questions taken from the pool. They supply us with templates to put over the answer sheets to grade the exams. Everything that we do regarding grading is specified to the nth degree. This is to protect us as well as to insure the integrety of the testing process. If we were to switch to essay questions, I, and I suspect most of my fellow VE's, would not feel competent to grade them. I'd feel competent to grade them. But that's not the issue. Grading of essay questions is necessarily subjective, not objective. *That's* the issue. With multiple choice, there's one right answer for each question and all the rest are wrong. No knowledge of the subject is needed to grade such a test. I do like the idea of negative points for wrong answers. But, that's not the program as we operate it. It would take a change of FCC rules, too. If we did deduct for wrong answers, we'd probably have to reduce the passing percentage of 74% (26 out of 35) to something lower, say 65%. Why? All that negative points do is to remove any possible gain fromguessing. The way the multiple-choice questions (5 choices for each) on the SATs were graded (back in the ancient times when I took them) wasthis: 5 points for each right answer -1 point for each wrong answer 0 points for each answer left blank. And any changes in this would have to be approved by the FCC in Part 97.503. Which would be the hardest part. But they could do more in the concepts of things like Fourier analysis and field theory, without having to work with big complicated equations. I'd settle for more in the concepts of Basic Radio. I have a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering, so in college I studied all kinds of complicated equations dealing with Fourier analysis and field theory (and had to derive some of them on closed-book tests). But after I graduated, I rarely had to apply those equations directly, just know the concepts and apply them. Me too. Plus real-life tends to be open-book; you check to be sure. The basic concepts can be understood, at a qualitative level, by simple diagrams and hand-waving. One of the things that ARRL publications do really well is to explain the concepts without tons of math and physics. Particularly the older Handbooks and the treasured "Understanding Amateur Radio" book. Simplified? Yes. Useful? Extremely! 73 de Jim, N2EY |
The Theory of Licensing
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The Theory of Licensing
On Feb 9, 2:50�pm, Dick Grady AC7EL wrote:
�If a wrong answer counted a negative 1/5 of a right answer, then the passing threshold could stay the same. But then the VE's would have to do a bit more math. �Either multi ply the right answers by 5, or deal with fractions. The math is pretty simple. Since the questions are all 4 choice, it would work like this: For all exams, you get 4 points for a correct answer, -1 point for a wrong answer and 0 points for no answer. Each exam would require a certain minimum number of points to pass. If my math is right, the 35 question exams would require 104 points to pass, 50 question exams would require 148 points to pass. In my college, the Math and Pysics departments used closed-book exams. The EE department used open-book exams: the prof would say: "You can bring with you to the exam anything except another sentient being." In my EE undergrad school, all the lower-level exams were closed book but as things progressed they became open book or test-free (based on homeworks and projects). In EE grad school, tests became even less important and projects/ homeworks more important. One course series involved doing presentations in front of the class, with questions from both the prof and the other students. Formulas were the least of it. --- I forget if I told the story of Professor W. here, but sometimes the lessons weren't immediately apparent in those classes... 73 de Jim, N2EY |
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