I'm not a VK, so I don't have a dog in this particular fight. In general, I believe in multiple classes of licenses, each being more difficult to obtain, and each coming with more privileges as an incentive. I was first licensed in the 1960s when the Novice class license was the entry level license in the United States. It came with a shelf life of one year, limited power authorization, and was mostly a CW license. It was fairly easy to obtain from volunteer examiners around the country. I would like to see such a license return to the American system, similar to the Technician class, but with a one-year expiration. Making ham radio licensing too easy attracts more people to the hobby but it also makes it vulnerable to a culture like CB. Anything that requires no effort is worth the amount of work it takes to get there.
Continuing the analogy, there is an old saying in numismatics, "Buy the book before the coin." Otherwise you can end up buying "valuable" items (i.e. junk) from late night infomercials flogging "rare coins". So having basic knowledge can avoid a costly mistake. In coin or stamp collecting it's not being stuck. In ham radio it's not being out of band. Or electrocuting yourself.
He is talking about VK land not the USA so listen to the podcast before you comment and jump to conclusions. Personally in the US we need to make some changes. 1) allow digital modes not just CW for Novice (grandfathered) and technician 2) allow techs to use SSB on 25khz of 40m and 80m and 100khz of 15m. This will increase the number of people with HF radios which is a good thing not a bad thing. Hate the idea I know change is bad to many people, but how many of you anti changers are no code licencees. For the record I passed 13wpm and later upgraded to extra and I operate CW more than SSB and I have nothing against no-code. I will say if your no code and don't do digital your hands are about 10-20db down from the rest of us playing. Bet ya did not work Fiji last night during the bottom of the solar cycle on SSB. Your loss is my no pileup ATNO.
Within the vk f-call syllabus the basics and saftey etc are already covered. Now if you look at the things i listed, no one needs to know how to look up a resistor colour code to set up a station ever, no one needs to understand the theory of how a valve works to safely operate a commercial valve amp and no one needs to understand a block diagram of an FM transmitter to use a 2m handheld, or how to bias a BJT in class A, AB or C to successfully buy a station and get it on the air without hurting themselves. And all but the very rare exception is going to open the box up and do finger poken when the radio stops working, its getting shipped back to the manufacturer for repair. Things have changed, they have changed dramatically so that electronic theory is irrelevant to todays hams. Sure in the 50's 60's and 70's when most novices begged, borrowed and salvaged to build their station, learning about serial and parallel resistance, capacitance and inductance and how to bias gain stages would be a very handy thing to know, RLC meters were not all that common im guessing so knowing how to read a resistor colour, or capacitor number might also be a handy skill, but today, these things are all highly irrelevant to all but the rare few. I mean how many people do you know that homebrew their entire station? Not a lot of the old guard elmers are using 100% homebrew stations and just about none of the new guys have any interest in electronics, even my own friends would rather rag chew or work some dx with SSB and have no interest in homebrew or CW. Its just how it is.
I agree, but those differences need to be based in reality not the arbitrary way they seem to get done. To take Onno's example of what is so special about 20m that an F-Call cannot use it? It seems rather arbitrary, we have 80, 40, 15, 10m SSB and CW so why not 20m. It just seems arbitrary, if you have enough skills and understanding to work the tomato net on 80m I am pretty sure you are smart enough and skilled enough to work the tomato net on 20m. Fcall gets no digital modes, but our standards and advanced do but are not examined on digital modes either. Since when does knowing how to bias a device mean you now have the understanding to use digital? Again arbitrary. After safety and operating procedure the only real difference between what any licence class can do is power. And long with Onno, I agree that power should be earned and that WARC and the low bands should be earned and probably microwaves also should be earned as there is a fair chance of cooking your head or someone elses. But as for the arbitrary things like you can only SSB here or CW there, or which bits of HF you can and cannot use, if you are smart enough and trained enough to use part of it, you should have all of it and what separates the licence classes is power. The WIA here is attempting to move things that way, but the process with ACMA is slow. If i recall off the top of my head, the changes proposed were to remove the 4 letter call, 50w, digital, 20m and some microwaves and some homebrew. Time will tell is that happens.
Ham radio has changed so much in the past 40 years when there were guys out there building and experimenting and learning the basics......nowadays we are too impatient to want to learn those things ...we want instant gratification. the same goes for ham radio .....now its nothing to memorize the questions get youre license and buy a cheap Chinese radio and get on the air. What also changed are the attitudes in ham radio from the older operators to the new operators. new guys want to just get on the air they dont want to or have time or may not even want to delve into the theory of some of this stuff....... whether they want to or not is not my concern..... what bothers me in a hobby where we are suppose to welcome new comers and help them along the way. what I have seen is the olders dont give 2 craps about the new guy anymore. they have their own niche and they stay there...... try listening to repeaters when new guys come on they will call out their signs and no one come back to them......and then all of a sudden a regular guy gets on the repeater he put out his call sign and by george there are 4 and 5 guys out there that respond. that is a turn off....i dont care for repeaters. so i dont go where im not welcome...why should i The atititudes of older compared to newer hams....its clear in some parts new guys are not welcome...we have to earn our keep and then in due time we will get our respect. instead of bitching about whats wrong with our system and how we hand out the privelge of getting the license it is not a right but a privilege. Start by helping new guys, give them some of your time....help the new guy in how to have good ethics............ ham radio operators are not born they are molded into what we have...if we do not nurture the new guys how will they grow and mature into good operators..... this topic of our system has been beaten to death....we know we cant change the government but what we can change is a little part of our own world and make it better and brighter for the newguys it doesnt take much to extend your hand and help a new guy or offer advice instead of ignoring them or hoping they would go away. just my 2 cents
KI4AX I should also mention part of the examination process here includes a practical exam where you have to set up a station in a safe manner, set the TX power level to what is allowed under your lic class, check the swr and then make contacts using standard operating procedure, by answering a cq call, calling cq and qsying to a new frequency and a few other things. The basics are well and truly covered.
Yes VK4FFAB ...When something is virtually handed to you on a platter your response is what i would expect we had a novice licence which was well received by 90% of hams in those times i supported it 100% basic theory regulations and 5 wpm cw ah yes that rotten 5wpm cannot have that okay so why did the powers to be just scrap the cw part no instead they butchered the whole lot theory foundation style is a joke a 5 year old can pass it regs not much different this licence was the brain child of out famous Wireless Institute . See the Institutes membership was dwindling we need to beef it up wow great idea a Foundation licence a licence that anyone with little or no effort can pass just look at the goings on on say 80 and 40 metre ham bands four letter swear words six letter swear words interference on purpose nets jumped up everywhere talk about anything but the hobby fishing net bbq net etc etc . Any idiot can talk with no knowledge on anything you can see it today ham radio in Australia is a joke and now this lot who got their F call with virtually no knowledge want the right to use more power more frequencies more modes tell me what did they do to justify these demands i have been on air since i was 16 with my call sign and proud that i had to do the hard yards to enter this once wonderful hobby sitting in a country post office at night for my written theory exam (no multi choice) regulations and the morse but now i do not get on airwhy what for to listen to some one talk aboutcooking fish or steak call cq till you are blue in the face unless you join a net and i am still learning today after 60 years on air and still restore old ham gear and build things .So VK4FFAB if you are what this hobby has developed into it is stuffed dont upgrade if you wait long enough it will be handed to you on a platter just like this Australian Foundation licence has been.
I have never heard a person doing a practical test whilst sitting for the F class ticker whose call sign do they use the examiners i think not gee what a tough exam questions like how do you turn the radio on and off as for Tx power level i means nothing who polices the 10 watt F licence power level i asked one F call how does he control his rig to put out the 10 watts permitted answer "i turn the mic gain down" what could i expect from someone with virtually no reasonable knowledge but such an answer anyway after he got offended and abused me calling me Old Fossil we parted company i from that day have never answered a F call calling cq most of them are nothing but Cber's operating 20 megs down in frequency.
But Robert to be fair i see you are at least making an attempt to improve your knowledge and skills and good luck with the home brew keep it up you will never be sorry and you can say with pride i built my station, my station was home brew it still works and i use it at times and still get a buzz out of it apart from other items i have home brewed over the years and keep up the CW 90% my contacts were and are on CW when all fails it works .
Even if you sit an advanced licence up front, you still must sit the practical examination. When i sat mine, I used the clubs call sign, in the absence of a club call i assume they would use the examiners call. Perhaps you should familiarise yourself with the current syllabus before commenting further, as there is a lot of stuff that is examined, both directly and indirectly that you may not be aware of, like the current EMC regulations? Does your station comply? Do you even know what those requirements are? Your experience of 80 and 40m differs greatly to mine, I do not hear the things you say go on, I hear few if any swearing with the exception of a couple of groups of 2 letter call frequency owners and they are so easy to avoid its trivial, i mostly do radio activities like WWFF, SOTA and contesting, so I have no idea what people rag chew about, at the end of the day, if you dont like the topic of the conversation, change it or find someone more interesting to talk to. I gave up trying to have technical conversations with my friends on the radio, because of the endless mic checks, audio checks, antenna checks and other associated narcissistic tendencies that are conversation killers, we use the phone or social media to discuss things we are working on. In this I am the exception, not the rule. My goals are to have a 100% homebrew station from the CW key all the way through to feedline and antenna. In that regard I am a 1950's ham. But most people are not me, and as much as I wish that the hobby was more like the 1950's when novices built their own station and there were people doing slow morse, todays reality is that most new people to the hobby do not aspire to be much more than appliance operators, and because of that, our examination and class structure should reflect that. What brings people to the hobby now days is not electronics, its a myriad of different things like. And assuming for 1 second that we had Onno's 3 class structure, or Low, Med and High power, I would still take the Low power option. QRO holds no interest top me, for that matter i rarely even run 10w, when i contest its as QRP, so im 5w, and when i am out portable doing WWFF I am either 5w cw with the YouKits or 8w SBB with a Bitx 40m. As for bands I only really use 2 of of what I can and thats 40 and 15. And i dont really need more. The only thing I wish Fcall had was homebrew transmitters. But even that is not important to me, once i have my station built, if the regs have not changed to allow homebrew on the fcall i will upgrade to Std so i can use my homebrew station. Till then, Im happy with what I got, but still think there is room for improvement in the class and examination structures we have.
""73 de Onno VK6FLAB"" Sorry Om but the answer to your whine is simple , upgrade your ticket and get access to the things you want , there are additional things taught in the upgrades which will enlighten you as to the reasons for upgrading and allowing you to experiment as many hams do for the sheer delight of learning ( that's called fun) . It certainly looks like you have a modest grasp of radio theory and might not have experimented much yet so why not give the learning a go and discover the pleasure it can give you ? . Personally after almost 40 years licensed everyday brings a new nuance to my hobby 73 B
I do not yet have my Technician License. I plan on taking the test in the next 60 days. I have no skin in this conversation at all, except for the comments made about the "new comers" getting into the hobby. To me this is a hobby and an alternative means of communications. My cousin has held an Amateur radio license since the 1960s. That is where I learned of the hobby. Through the years I have dabbled in radio communications mainly in the Public Safety and Business frequencies. I lost count of the number of mobile radios I installed or helped to install in Law Enforcement vehicles, Ambulances and Fire Trucks. Finally as I get closer to retirement I have the time to devote to this new hobby. Some of us "newbies" do have some background, knowledge and experience. Hopefully, when I receive my license and make a call on a repeater, on my Amazon purchased radio, using an antenna that I built my self, someone will answer.
Some of the commentators seem to have missed Onno's point. He's not complaining about the limitations that his Foundation license imposes. Rather, he advocates changing the amateur licensing structure so it reflects current technology and, therefore, makes our hobby more relevant and useful. I don't know whether structuring license classes based on power levels is the answer, but asking how we can make amateur radio stronger and more relevant is a valid question if we hope to keep our hobby alive and well. His second point is that we should not look down on hams who hold entry level licenses. They are not ignorant, nor are the holders of more advanced licenses all-knowing. In my case, I would not have passed my Advanced Class exam in 1976 without "Elmering" from a couple of Technician-class hams. (Thanks guys.) The license each of holds reflects the knowledge we have been tested on, not the knowledge we have. 73 Pete
