wrote in message
ups.com...

Dan/W4NTI wrote:
Before 1968 when the first phase of incentive licensing
was forced upon us
there was a defacto one license system for HF access.

You had the General which gave you all Amateur privileges.
As did the old
Class A. As did the Extra. NO DIFFERENCE AT ALL.
And the Novice was just
the "stepping stone" to the General.

Actually it's a bit more complicated....

From the early 1930s until 1951, there was the three-class "ABC"
system. B and C were the same except C was by mail and B was by FCC
examiner. 13 wpm and a pretty serious written test.

Class A required a Class B or C for a year, plus another written test.
Only available from an FCC examiner, and if you had a Class C you had
to do the exam for Class B all over again.

The *only* operating difference was that Class A had 'phone on HF/MF
ham bands except 160, 10 and 11 meters, and Class B and C did not.

Back then there were no 30, 17, 15 or 12 meter ham bands. And 40 meters
was all Morse Code. The Class A 'phone bands were 75 and 20.

Then in 1951, FCC changed everything. Class A became Advanced, Class B
became General and Class C became Conditional. The new Extra,
Technician and Novice licenses were created. And they announced that
after the end of 1952 there would be no more new Advanceds - you'd need
an Extra to do 'phone on the above-mentioned HF bands.

But in December 1952, just as time was running out, FCC reversed itself
completely, and gave all privileges to all US hams except Novices and
Techs.

FCC continued on that path in the following years. 40 meters got a
'phone segment, and when 15 became a ham band, it soon got a 'phone
segment too.

Some folks were very unhappy about it all. The Class A 'phone bands
became full of newbies with General and Conditional tickets. Only a few
thousand hams got Extras. The Novice was
enormously popular even though it gave extremely limited privileges.

This happy state of affairs lasted only a decade - then FCC began
making noises of disappointment about how few hams had Extras and how
much appliance operating was going on. ARRL responded with a simple
proposal: reopen the Advanced to new issues, and go back to the old
system where HF 'phone required an Advanced or Extra.

For about 5 years there were discussions that made the code-test issue
look tame. All sorts of proposals came and went - the idea of a
rabbit-warren of subbands-by-license-class came from CQ magazine, for
example.

A *lot* of folks were very unhappy because when the new rules went into
effect, they lost operating privs.

The Technician was for those that couldn't hack the 13WPM code and had
to do
the test to keep a license.

The Tech was originally meant for those not interested in HF.
It originally did not have 6 and 2 meters.

The Novice expired after 1 year and was
non-renewable.

Not only that, it was "non-retakeable". Only those who had never held
any class of ham license before could get a Novice. One year,
one shot - upgrade or go off the air.

At the end of WW2, there were about 60,000 US hams

By 1951, there were about 100,000 US hams. About 30% were Class A and
the rest B and C.

By 1965, there were over 250,000 US hams. About 18,000 were Novices,
about 40,000 were Advanced, and only about 4,000 were Extras. The rest
were mostly Generals and Conditionals, with a few thousand Techs.

The result was that the vast majority (at least 85%) of US hams had all
operating priviliges.

Despite all the changes in the intervening years, FCC says in the NPRM
that it thinks there need to be 3 license classes - Tech, General and
Extra, with frequency space as the incentive to upgrade. FCC is content
to let the Novice, Advanced and Tech Plus licenses disappear by
attrition and upgrading Technicians as Techs.

Was the old system better?

73 de Jim, N2EY


It must have been. The FCC is going back to it. Modern version of 3
license structure.

I should have been a bit more clear. I was referening to the period from
1961 on. However I do have some gaps. Especially from 64 to 68, I was
busy elsewhere.

Dan/W4NTI

Dan/W4NTI