Japan's Class 4 ham radio licence Japan introduced its entry level Class 4 licence in the the late 1950's, it would prove to be the world's most successful category of amateur radio licence, taken by over 3 million people The work required to get a Class 4 licence is less than that needed for UK Foundation. It takes about 10 hours study and unlike the UK Foundation there are no Practical Assessments just a short multiple choice test at the end of the course. It seems pass rates of 97% or higher are commonplace. A Class 4 licence permits the following: • 1 watt EIRP on 135 and 472 kHz • 10 watts output on 1.9, 3.5, 7, 21, 24, 28 MHz bands • 20 watts output on 50, 144 and 430 MHz bands • Varying power levels between 10 watts and 0.1 watts on ALL amateur bands between 1240 MHz and 250 GHz. It is notable that Japan gives their Entry Level Licence class full access to all the Microwave and Millimetric bands. Japanese call signs, licence conditions and statistics http://www.motobayashi.net/callsign/enigma/index.html Japanese Operator Statistics http://www.ah0a.org/MPT/JA-Op's.html JARL in Google English https://tinyurl.com/JapanJARL http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2019/october/japan-class-4-ham-radio-licence.htm
Easy Entry....Good for Business!. More Ham radios for sale!...There are 435,581 (2015) Ham Operators in Japan, which is about 0.34% of population of Japan. This is the highest percentage of Ham operators per population per country. This will only increase the sales numbers.... It is all about the bottom line isn't? About 40 years ago, I passed my Extra Class. I interviewed the following day, although I had a BSEE, 1st Class, phone, I got hired because I was a Ham operator. The manager knew I had practical experience through Ham radio and discipline to pass the CW code. Ham radio launched my satellite career! What a journey after living in or short stays 70 countries, designing satellite Teleport and launching satellites. I got chance to see the world, all due to Ham radio. I wonder if today the same opportunity would be given to a new Ham Operator, with the new easy Entry to Ham radio? My son, who is 12, passed the Ham license in 2 weeks. He passed for his Dad....his calls are KI5FJE (Adam)...He has no interest in Ham radio though, I wonder though if it took him 6 months, and he had to pass the Code, and study material and comprehend. (Although Adam understood the material, but lets face it, a pool of questions, you can't help to memorize). All good, see you on the bands... NN2X, Tom
Korea gives all ham bands to generals. I think it's a good idea. I like the idea of an easy to obtain 10w license with more HF access. Those really interested in Ham will either up their license, or work to improve their antennas. Japan also sells popular versions of 100w radios that are restricted to 50w, and less. They usually have an M designation at the end of their model number.
Any entry level licence-class is a fantastic thing for AR. Some nations and representative bodies "resist" having Enter level licenses such as Technician/Foundation-class licenses seen in many regulatory domains across the world. Its about time that these nations "grew up" and some of the arrogant negativity that prevents such licenses from happening be retired. That may even mean that the lack of visionary leadership promoting such arrogant behaviors should be retired as well. Some nations only support one class of licence as it is easy and cheap for their regulator to implement this. This again is a very backward argument used by Governments of some nations. In particular, entry-level licences encourages and actively supports our ladies to enter AR. In many parts of the world the culture is such that our ladies are not focused towards the STEM areas - Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. Entry level licences create a great way to start breaking down these stereotyped roles from days long gone past. My lady fitted this stereotype having been pushed into secretarial and administrative roles. The foundation licence helped her to break these stereotypes and she has subsequently has progressed from a Foundation to a Standard licence here in Australia as have many other ladies - many who have gone even further - in our community. Here in Australia the ALARA (Australian Ladies Amateur Radio Association) that I work with heavily (hoping to support our ladies ladies to points where ALARA can taken on assessment and training roles without my support) offers huge support for such licences; I must also active advertise that they have a program in place where they will support ladies entering AR and especially underwrite some of the costs for advancing from Foundation-grade licenses. See the ALARA website at http://www.alara.org.au for more information on ALARA's efforts. [ Note that all Amateur Radio Clubs and organisations should be doing this rather than amassing money in the bank - negative-for AR growth and promotion "business" stereotypical thinking rather than STEM thinking that will grow and develop AR in this internet and mobile-phone age. ] These entry-levels license should be given just enough rights to be usable in the International community. 10W for most nations is about right. There should be just enough imputeus for licensees to actively be able to participate in the AR community but eventually find the need/desire to progress their skills (and hence AR in general) and seek higher levels of certification.
Am I missing something here? Why is a post about something that occurred in the late 1950's being posted under Amateur Radio News? Perhaps one day we'll find out about Marconi and his TX of the letter S without giving his callsign. We know it was you Guglielmo.
Rick, Possibly so (and please no insult ever intended here). The base Southgate story is a report/editorial about the success of the JA Class 4 licence. My comment relates to supporting the concept as do others in these threads. Many Amateurs (and I WILL single out our NZ [ZL] Cousins cousins "across the ditch" here....) do not support such concepts. There is also old-school arrogance well entrenched in the AR community that think that the only Amateurs that deserve use of the AR spectrum are Advanced/Extra Class licensees. I can remember as a Novice here in AU [VK] back in the 80's that we were shunned by the "old school old guard" and we had to primarily play among ourselves! Even here now... our regulator The ACMA refers consistently to the "administrative burden" of maintaining the multiple classes of license here in VK (i.e. Foundation, Standard, Advanced, Repeater, Beacon). Yet as they state they maintain ths as it is what Amateurs want. 73 Steve I VK3VM / VK3SIR Ps: Under no circumstances am I knocking my great ZL friends as individuals nor am I putting down their efforts ... yet I am singling out ZL COLLECTIVELY as a REGULATORY DOMAIN ONLY for not entertaining a multiple licence-class scheme that is more accessible to many (i.e. ladies) within the greater NZ population beyond just a single highly-technical CEPT-compliant qualification. I have many GREAT FRIENDS (and fiends...) with ZL calls - many also being ladies. Yet the representation of ZL ladies from stats that I have seen (and will quote again when I can re-locate them) is FAR BELOW THAT of many other Amateur Radio dominions. I am sure that an entry-level licence class in ZL when finally recommended and adopted would go along way to countering imbalances in representation. Yet we do know that our ACMA here in Australia has openly said to some that they would prefer a single-class of licence, just as New Zealand has, to reduce "administrative burden". Ask RASA and The WIA about this.
I have to admit I just don't see the point to using frequencies in the GHz range for ham radio. Might as well just shine a flashlight out your window for all the distance it would cover.
I disagree ... and vigorously ! Some of the greatest distances are covered using these bands... Moonbounce... Satellites... Meteor scatter... Then there are up-links using wide band modes for activities such as Digital ATV (and that has been very active here in VK3). Mind you a considerable amount of what I identified above has little commercial application... Yet all has HUGE community enrichment values. Note that I am very much a HF man (10,000+ LOTW confirmed) with some mild interest in 70cm (where I personally operate a DMR Repeater for community enrichment)..... Unless EVERY Amateur supports EVERY mode at EVERY power level at EVERY band all we end up is with is the DISHARMONY, FRACTURE, CHAOS and INFIGHTING that we have now. Look at what is occurring now especially at these "GHz" bands ... commercial interests (especially at these frequencies) chewing up and walking all over us - subsuming our local spectrum allocations as any regulatory domain can accept or ignore ITU guidelines at their own whims. With some technologies around - Business and Defense demands (as well as Broadcasters) are eyeing up HF spectrum and in some cases openly fostering disharmony and disunity in our communities ! Some of our perceived "white rabbits" in AR pushing sectional interests at the expense of the holistic view are really "wolves in sheep's clothing".
Well, gee-whiz Rich! Have YOU NEWS...or something better to post? Then, by all means OM, POST IT! And, hope you feel better REAL soon! 73
Yes....a great idea. Because people follow the power limit rules on bands like 30m and 60m just like they're told to do all the time.
Here in the US, General class operators in the US should have all access. The hobby is dwindling because of prima-donnas.
