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#11
January 28th 07, 02:11 PM
posted to rec.radio.amateur.policy
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Those Old Study Guides
Mike Coslo wrote:
wrote in ups.com: Mike Coslo wrote: wrote in oups.com: On Jan 25, 9:26 am, Cecil Moore wrote: wrote: Your recollections are correct, Cecil, with minor corrections to the Conditional distance. Which changed right around the time you got the license, as did the retest rules. Thanks Jim, for the history lesson. You're welcome, Cecil. Thanks for reading. The old Conditional was preceded by the Class C, which was essentially the same license with a different name. Early 1930s until the 1951 restructuring. Some folks think that the 1964-65 rules Conditional changes really cut into the growth of US ham radio. After those changes, a ham who wanted a renewable license with HF privileges pretty much had to go to an FCC exam point unless s/he lived *way* out in the boonies. Just getting to the exam could be a major journey, depending on where you lived. I understand what you say here Jim, but I don't agree. If a person can go to the trouble of learning Morse code, they should be able to go to the trouble of traveling to the FCC exam points. It's a completely different situation. Learning Morse Code is directly related to getting the license and what is done with it. Traveling to a distant city back in the days before the Interstate Highway System isn't. I was a kid from a rather poor family. And yet I could get my parents to help out with things-once I convinced then that I was serious. That's great - and how it should be. But not all families are like that. For example, "helping out" is defined differently by different families. In my case, the parental units defined "helping out" as allowing me to use a corner of the basement for my radio stuff, and allowing me to hang antennas from the various trees and from the side of the house. Plus I didn't have to pay for the electricity I used to run the radio corner. *Everything* else connected with ham radio was on me. That's why I say I was lucky to live so close to an FCC exam point. Regardless, effort is the important thing, and I don't see it as different. But it *is* different. I can't imagine that a peron who went to the trouble of learning the material would feel otherwise. I can. And it's not about how anyone felt - it's about the reality of the requirements. It all depends on the situation, Mike. Consider the case posed by K8MN, which was very common in the 1950s and 1960s. How was a young 1950s ham supposed to get to a license test session 120 miles away, and be there before 8 AM on a weekday morning? Perhaps it was a filter like learning CW? (oops, my bad) Remember too that the distance rule was "air line", meaning straight- line distance on the map, not actual distance on the road. In many places, 125 miles air-line could be twice that on the road. More than three hours at the common speed limit of 40 mph - if everything went according to plan. Living in central PA, I'm painfully aware of that. My parents house is around 5 miles away by air, but no closer than 11 iles by car. How long would it take to drive from there to Philly or Pittsburgh back before the Interstate Highway system? What do you think it was like in the Rockies, where 175 miles air-line could be twice that by road? For me, the biggest difficulty in getting to the FCC office was the fact that tests in the Philly office were only given on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays - which were all school days. Young hams like me had to wait for summer, or a school holiday that was not a Federal holiday. (There was no way a school kid would skip school for a day to take a ham radio exam!) With the 30 day wait to retest, there was a real incentive to pass on the first try. I'll bet it was an incredibly exciting event for you, no? It was a *serious* event, more than exciting. If a kid timed it right, there could be as many as three chances to test in a single summer. But it was a long stretch through the school year. About the only chance we had back then was the Christmas break - if the holiday didn't also close the FCC office. No sarcasm here, I'm serious. The point I would make is that the perceived "difficulty" included both the test itself and accessing it. As I have said before, making the test sessions more accessible is a Good Thing. I was lucky - all I needed was decent shoes and a couple of subway tokens. Three quarters of a mile to the 69th Street Terminal, the Market-Frankford Subway-Elevated to 2nd Street, and a block south to the US Custom House. I travelled about 120 mikes fro my Tech, about 300 for my General written CSCE, a mere 20 for my Element 1, and aroud 70 for my Extra. Round trip or one way? Weekday or weekend? Did you have to be there at 8 AM or be turned away? I was going to become a ham, but I couldn't get there before 9 am..... ;^) I could leave the house at 7 and be at the FCC office by 8 without even walking fast. Easy. Most of all, note the wide variation in distances. I'll bet you went to different VE sessions at various hamfests, some close to home, some not. You went when it was convenient for *you*. Only the General CSCE was at a Hamfest. The rest I looked up and went to. Point is, you had lots of options. That's a Good Thing. My point is that in the Conditional days there was no choice. You went to the FCC office, on their schedule, unless you lived beyond the Conditional distance. And note this most of all: FCC didn't change the distance in 1954 because of concern for hams having to travel long distances to get to an exam session. FCC changed the distance to reduce their workload giving the exams! I had to look up to see what we were discussiong here, Jim. My point is that I seriously doubt that eliminating the mail ins harmed Amateur radio. Numbers continued to grow (I believe) and by the 60's, American society was becoming much more mobile. The facts are somewhat different. Amateur radio in the USA grew from about 60,000 hams in 1946 to about 250,000 in 1964. That's a quadrupling in less than 20 years, which works out to around 8% growth per year for 18 years. At least 190,000 new hams if nobody dropped out. Probably over 200,000 - more than 10,000 per year. Then in 1965 the growth suddenly slowed to a trickle. In the next decade or so, the numbers hovered around 250,000, with some years a little up and some a little down. That was the year the Conditional distance went from 75 miles to 175 miles, and the FCC added enough exam points so that almost all of CONUS was covered. Do you think that change might have affected growth? 73 de Jim, N2EY |
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