KØHB wrote:
"Dee Flint" wrote

One of the elements is self training and technical knowlegde. You encourage
that by using increased privileges (spectrum and power) to get people to study
and take additional tests.

If it were working, it would be evident on the air.

How would it be evident, Hans?

Can you tell a "state of the art" rig apart from a good old one that's
10, 20, 30 years
old just by its signal quality?

Can you tell my homebrew rig's signals apart from those from, say, an
IC-7800 just
by listening to them?

But I'll encourage you to
try a little practical experiment to see if you can detect the results inthe
real world.

You'll need the following materials for the experiment:

1. A reasonable sensitive receiver, hooked to a working antenna.
2. A blindfold.
3. A set of earphones.
4. No extreme hearing impairments.
5. A comfortable chair.

Seat your self at the receiver, and tune it to the TOP of a popular band with
good propagation to the USA, probably 40 or 75 meters. Don the earphonesand
plug them in. Set the receiver RF gain full open and the AF gain at a
comfortable level.

Now place your blindfold over your eyes.

Slowly tune the receiver down the band. If incentive licensing is working, when
you cross over the General/Advanced boundary and again when you cross the
Advanced/Extra boundary, you should detect a noticeable increase in the
"training and technical knowlege" of the operators because of better/cleaner
signals, more sophisticated technical discussions, and other evidence of better
training and technical knowlege.

Or maybe not. Your experiment has some real problems:

First, it assumes that hams with the various license classes stay only
in their respective subbands, in that you won't find Extras in the
Advanced and General parts, or Advanceds
in the General parts, etc. But that's not how it works.

Second, a lot of the discussions heard aren't about technical subjects.
So the sample size is gonna be kinda small.

Third, most "modern" rigs and many "older" rigs have such good signal
quality that
you can't really tell much about the operator other than s/he knows
enough not
to yell into the mike or turn the gain up too far.

If your ear does NOT detect this sort of
evidence as you tune across those boundaries, then you can conclude (as Ihave)
that incentive licensing is an abject failure.

The problem is convincing FCC. See footnote 142 in the NPRM.

73 de Jim, N2EY

btw, loved that QRQ story.

IIRC, back in the 1980s I read a somewhat-similar story in "Air &
Space"
but of course the op requesting a QRQ was in an airplane. The ground
station
was in the Mediterranean - Egypt, I think. Somewhat earlier time -
early 1950s.

Both great stories.