In article . net, "KØHB"
writes:

"N2EY" wrote

From 1951 till 1968 the privileges for four license classes, Conditional,
General, Advanced, and Extra were all exactly the same.

No, that's not exactly correct.

The period described started in February of 1953, not 1951.

Whatever.

Point is, FCC spent years developing the new structure, announced it on 1951,
but then just when the tough part of the new rules (requiring an Extra for
amateur HF phone on 80 thru 15), they dumped those rules and gave everybody
except Novices and Techs everything.

You could, however, usually tell the oldtimers from the newbies by the
license class, but that was about all.

Unless someone told you their license class, there was no way of knowing.
There was no 'QRZ.COM' to go check, the CallBook didn't show license class,
and all you could tell by their call sign was where their station was
located. We all played together in the ether as equals.

Except for Novices, whose distinctive callsigns were unmistakeable.

Except for Techs.who had no HF at all and originally no 6 or 2 meters either.

And the alphabetic order of license told who was an OT and who was a newbie.
W3ABC was an OT compared to W3YIK. W3YIK was an OT compared to K3NYT. K3NYT was
an OT compared to WA3IYC. Etc. Usually, anyway.

If everything was so nice, why was FCC so unhappy with the way things were
going? As early as 1958, FCC wanted to know why there were so few Extras. They
asked again in 1963 and made it clear they wanted to bigtime changes.

Personally, I think it was "Sputnik fever". They, like many others in the USA,
were spooked by the early Soviet achievements in space (first artificial
satellite, first animal in space, first pictures of the far side of the moon,
first man in space, first woman in space.....the list goes on and on) and
perceived the USA to need "incentive" in all things technological.

73 de Jim, N2EY