Incentive Licensing Retrospective

WA4RYW writes:

"The amateur radio of the earlier days will never exist again. No one wants to buy expensive equipment, fight lunatic covenants to install the required antennas, and have to actually exert himself or herself to “pass a test”, just so they can engage in the science of the 1950s"

As much as i hate to admit it, I think he is 100% correct.

 

Good HF rigs on Ebay for less then $200. All kinds of stealth antennas can be built for the cost of speaker wire from Home Depot. You can even make your own ladder line with speaker wire and popsicle sticks.

Add an antenna tuner, and you are on the air.

Not everyone has 100' towers, and they do just fine.

When I started, I had a speaker wire dipole in the attic, a Drake TR4C, and straight key. I worked all kind of DX, just like I can now with a 5-watt K1 and speaker wire.

Why is there this perception that new radios are so much better then old boat anchors? And that you need giant yagi's in the clouds to operate. AES and HRO just love you guys.

73 - W6NJ

 

I passed my Extra in 1963, before I had even heard any talk about Incentive Licensing. I held a 2nd Class Radiotelephone, and a friend who also held one had to go down to take his 1st Class because it was required for his new job at Bell Telephone. I decided to go with him for the ride, and since there was no examination fee, decided to try it myself, just to see what the exam was like, to prepare me for when I would retake the exam for real. The only radio training that I had experienced was hands-on from building ham transmitters and working on receivers. At the time I had successfully designed and built a homebrew kilowatt AM/CW transmitter that worked on the lower HF bands.

On the way down to the FCC exam, I looked through a Q-A manual and studied stuff like what deviation is used for the audio portion of a TV signal, and some of the standards regarding commercial two-way FM. When I opened the exam, the first thing I noticed was that the questions were easier than the ones I had seen on the 2nd Class exam. There were some schematic diagrams to draw and a few questions that referred to block diagrams. It didn't seem overly difficult, so I breezed through it, ignoring the questions I didn't know until the very end, then I went back and made educated guesses at the ones I wasn't sure about. I left the exam feeling confident, and told my friend I wanted to stay and try for the amateur Extra exam. He had to leave to get back to work, so I decided to stay and find my own way back home, hitchhiking if necessary.

I hadn't practised code for several years, except for a few CW QSO's every now and again. The code test was a challenge inside the bare marble walls with the tape recorder and its tiny speaker and no headphones, but somehow I managed to muddle through. Then came the written test. Surprisingly, many of the questions were identical to ones on the commercial exam I had just taken.

Turns out I passed both Extra Class and 1st Class Phone exams, while my friend flunked his commercial exam and had to drive all the way to Atlanta to retake it 30 days later.

At that time, the Extra carried no additional privileges above General, but you got this nice certificate that looked like a smaller version of the commercial licence, to hang on the wall. I still have it on the wall in my shack.

When Incentive Licensing came along, I knew it wouldn't affect me one way or the other, so I wasn't particularly opposed to it, but did not promote the idea, either. At that time they were talking of restoring the old Class A/Class B system of restricted voice bands (not subbands), and I thought well maybe that wouldn't be such a bad idea, with the noticeable recent influx of appliance operators and clueless "Conditional Class" licensees.

When I-L went into effect, the first thing I noticed was how quickly the remaining AM operation disappeared from 75m. I could work anywhere in the bands just as I always could, but many of my friends were limited to the General Class segments, which immediately became congested beyond practical use. I began to realise right away, that I preferred the bands the way they had been before Incentive Licensing. I also understood the frustration and anger of having privileges, once granted, taken away.

Along with AM, another aspect of change on the lower HF bands was that most of the homebrew rigs disappeared, as more and more hams bought SSB transceivers and commercially built linears to go with them.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Incentive Licensing was a dismal failure from the outset in terms of its originally stated purpose, to upgrade the technical proficiency of the amateur radio community. If anything, I-L accelerated the demise of homebrewing and technical proficiency. Once I-L had been implemented, the few remaining homebrewers seemed to disappear, and amateur radio became, once and for all, an appliance operator/communicator's hobby, with much less emphasis on the technical aspects of radio.

A few hardy souls remained on the air with AM and homebrew rigs, making possible the "comeback" of AM that began about 5 years later, but it seems to me that 1969 marks the end of the "old" ham radio era, of hams building their own out of what was available, and the "new" ham radio era of hams mainly interested in communicating, buying 100% commercially-built equipment that they send back to the factory for repairs.

With the continuing increase in complexity of ham equipment, the easing of examination requirements and the elimination of FCC testing, the conversion of mainstream ham radio to appliance operation has continued to accelerate ever since 1969. So, in terms of its stated goal and purpose, Incentive Licensing has not been a success. Other than the ability to copy code at 20 wpm, about the only skill I-L has really promoted is that of answering M-C test questions.

With the near-elimination of the code requirement (and probable complete elimination in the near future), and restructuring (some call it dumbing down) of the written tests, what purpose does the continuation of the Extra, Advanced and General class distinctions and subband segmentation serve, other than to spare ARRL and the FCC from having to admit they made a mistake?

Since it would be unrealistic to expect the FCC to reinstate the 13/20 wpm code requirements, or continue any code requirements at all, let's have just two classes of licence: a realistic entry level class, and a permanent "General" class with meaningful examination requirements. Retain the existing Extra Class cw subbands for cw only, open to all classes of licence, and open the rest of the HF bands to any mode on any frequency, as it now is in Canada and on 160m in the US. Instead of a "bandwidth" plan as proposed by the League, simply enforce the rule requiring "good engineering and amateur practice," and add a clause limiting the necessary (as opposed to occupied) bandwidths of new modes not presently specified in the rules, to that of the widest incumbent mode now permitted in each of the bands, without any reference to specific bandwidth figures.

K4KYV

 

I'm a new licensee, and a no-code tech. I understand that the code requirement is going away soon, or might be, but I'm studying code anyway... not to get my general, but because code is a part of amateur radio.

I have three motivations, and the order changes every time I think about it.
1:My father was WA4JWM, and I want to follow in his footsteps.

2: after 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, the ability to communicate at distance without infrastructure (internet and cellphones would be the first casualties of a major attack) is obviously valuable.

3: After 20 years in the computer industry, I've run the technology as far as I can, and am looking to ways to extend in new directions (geek-merge!)

There's a lot of discussion about the pros and cons of CW, and of CW as a licence requirement. CW is a communications mode, same as phone, RTTY, ATV, digital, PSK31, Laser and whatever else. If I want to study digital and laser so that I can transmit images from a disaster scene using amateur radio, why do I need to pass a CW test? shouldn't there be a digital imaging test?

Listening just in the past few weeks, on HF and VHF, perhaps there should be a practical phone test, as well. Diction, enunciation, concision and politeness should be tested for, and have priveleges based upon an operator's ability to speak clearly.

This is my humble opinion.


KI4MWG

 

Ok guys, I'm not 100 years old and haven't been licensed for 85 of those hundred years like some of you ( I'm only 46, been licensed 30 of them) so maybe I don't get it. Correct me if I'm wrong here.

No one is saying that you won't be able to use CW anymore if the new proposals pass. Use it if you wish. I've never been on SSTV, and don't intend to be, but you can if you want. Same with any of the modes. Why is everyone carrying on like it's being taken away from them? I've made lots of contacts on CW, but not a single one in the last 15 or so years. I didn't like it when I had to pass the 5 wpm test for my original Technician license, I still didn't like it when I passed the 13 wpm to upgrade to general, and I don't like it now. Consequently, all you guys carrying your qrp cw rigs into the mountains will be out of luck if you need help, I won't be listening, unless you can tune it into the phone band, and then you might get my attention.

As for disaster communications, as I said in my previous post, on site communications will happen on 2 meters or 70 cm FM, if they allow us to help at all. And that's a big IF folks. Once again, ELECTED officials will never admit that the system they spent many thousands of taxpayer dollars on has failed, be it a simple repeater system or some fancy trunked thing on 800 mhz. I've worked with these people for years as a volunteer, a service vendor, and a ham, and everything, no matter what it is, no matter how many people are in need or in danger, gets evaluated as to how it will affect thier image. You only have to watch the Katrina coverage to see it. The last thing these guys want is a tv camera showing some guy in the command post tapping out messages with a code key. It would be bad enough to have to put a ham in the car or truck with the cop or fireman, and we wouldn't get any press for that.

Someone mentioned something about an ocean liner going down....the old "ship at sea" argument don't float the boat (pun intended) anymore. In case you haven't heard, the USCG discontinued monitoring the martime CW distress frequency some time ago. Justified that by saying they had recieved only a very few full of calls in several years of monitoring compared to several thousand calls in the same time period using the other modes.

No body with half a brain will argue that it will get through when nothing else will, of course it will. But as time and technology have changed, hams as a whole, have refused to change with them....in this respect. No one uses spark gap transmitters now. Why? They are older technology, they are tradition...why not use them? I'm being absurd, of course, but it illustrates the point.

Incentive licensing was a good idea, but it got a little carried away. I myself think that there should never have been more than 2 or 3 classes at most. We had what, 6 at one point? Too much of a good thing I think. An introductory, intermediate and upper level license, all with their own spectrum assignments and of course increasing privileges would have been sufficient. The lower licenses should have just enough sampling of the privileges above it to stir interest in moving up. But like so many things, we let it run amok. Novice had some CW on HF. When I got my first ticket, the Techian class had the same test as the General, only 5 wpm code. Back then, it had the novice privileges and all of vhf and up. I stayed at this class for many years because gave me the privilges I needed to do what I was interested in. I wanted to play with antennas. I lived on a 75' x 150' city lot at the time, so gain antennas on 75 meters were a bit difficult. But hey, 6 and 2 meters were ripe for the picking! A few years later, my interest changed, and the new phone privileges granted to novice/tech on 10 meters got my attention. After my first hf contest as a 10 meter only entrant, I was hooked. Off to the testing site to upgrade.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, even if no one is listening. Lets make the test relect the state of the art. Lets do away with verbatim question pools, and come up with questions that make the person taking the test actually know things. Who cares if I can compute the Q of a coil if I don't know why I need it? Print the formulas on the test, then quiz me over how to use the results. Ok, I can copy 5 wpm, do I know how to tune up my transmitter to answer the guy sending it? These are the things we need to address with testing. All the tradition in the world won't help that. Drop the code, make actual RADIO KNOWLEDGE be the filter.

I'm done now.

73's

Bryan

 

Heck i was a Cber and i have no clue what it means!! Shoot, i dont know what half the goofy stuff thats said on the CB means really. I never got into that stupid talk. i just talked like a human being not some nit wit 1970s sounding CBer..
As for ham radio dying i think it is. I know of no one that desired to have a ham ticket thats my age (age 32). A lot of the people in my area that are hams are all way older than me and most of them are age 65 and above.. The replies i get from people i talk to about ham radio are "what can ham radio do for me that my cell phone or computer and internet cannot do" or why would i want to take a test and memorise an ancient form of coomunications (I.E. CW) just to talk to someone on a radio?

 

I guess that the so called "state of the art" in todays terms really means that you go out and buy a transceiver, put up a prefab wire antenna or vertical...possibly a T2FD just to make it easier, connect your antenna to the back of the radio which has all of its connectors labeled so you can not get it wrong, ditto the power supply and microphone. You then turn on the transceiver and select the band from the conveniently labled bandswitch and engage your autotuner which is self explanatory. At this point you are ready to go.

The only thing that really needs to be on the test is a section on where you can transmit as it regards your license class and some other silly rules and regs which seem to be going down the drain anyway.

Once the formality of the test is taken care of, you can call yourseld a ham, and hopefully you will start to wonder how your magic box actually does its work and why your antenna radiates a signal (or not). At this point you might be on the verge of getting caught up in radio and electronic theory which has infected so many of us old farts for the better part of a lifetime.

73
George
K3UD

 

Albert,

I had that explained to me by a close friend (now deceased) who was a Psychologist. His theory was that as we grow older we become a bit more intolerant as we realize that there are things going on that we do not agree with but have no power to change. He also had what I thought was a very interesting theory on why time seems to pass faster as one grows older. His take was that as we age, any period of time which falls into you life experence (hour, day, week, year or decade) is less a part of your total lifetime than it was a day or a year ago. Personally I buy into this as I remember summer vacations from school seemingly lasting an eternity.

I think that Roger Kahn in the book "The Boys Of Summer" said it best when he talked about the retired people in Florida coming out to see spring training games and telling him that a week is passing by as quick as a day did when they were young.

I know this has nothing to do with ham radio but is interesting anyway.

BTW, How do you like your 756PROIII?

I hope that you had a great Christmas and that the New Year has great things in store for you.

73
George
K3UD

 

>>The US was concentrating on weapons of war development and building the finest cold war arsenal. Although latter day critics have denounced this effort, it did lead to some of the best military hardware ever produced to that point.

Actually that effot begot the ballistic missle and satellite programs which begot printed circuit boards and integrated circuits. They they then begot microprocessors, PC's and todays modern rigs.

Pretty good benefit to the civilian world I would say.

73

Gary, K2GW

 

I figured that out on my own, years ago, and since then have heard the same theory independently from other people.

Here's another idea that occurred to me, regarding old vs young, the "good ol' days" vs the present, when the old sometime envy the young because of all the years the young still have ahead of them.

Think of it as if everyone started off at precisely the same instant, like in a race. We were each born the year zero, and live until year X when we die. Regardless of whether we were born in 1920 or 1980, we all have the same perception of the passing of time. We were all once at youth and most of us will eventually get to old age. Our position in the time line of history affects our experiences along the way. It is our position in the time line relative to others that gives us the impressions about being young and old, since everyone has an identical experience of passing through time.

 

Don, as a young Novice in the 60s, I used to listen to you on 75m and marvel at the quality signal that you had. Of course, AM was king and you were at the top of the ladder.

Nice to see that you are still around.

 

I agree,--"what will be will be",--"for better for worse",
and many, if not most OT`s including myself think it
will be "worse".
.
Once the "floodgates" are opened, ham radio will never
be the "same".

It happened with the de-regulation of CB,(it became
a free for all) and the same will happen with ham radio.
It`s just a matter of time.

Of course, many liberal`s  cannot "wait" for
this to happen, under the notion that change, ALL
change, is and must be "better.

                           73, K1MVP

 

I happen to agree with that theory on a mathematical basis. Good thing I'm so bad at math, or it would make me cranky to ponder that a day is 1/20090th of my life.

 

Well, ok, maybe we should ask prospective hams if they can tell one knob from the other. Thanks for at least seeing my point!

That point was (for those who may have gotten bogged down in the trivia and missed it) is that today's test is inadequate, and it has nothing to do with whether the morse requirement exists or not. People memorize the answers, regurgitate the information by coloring in a circle and come away with a license still not knowing even in general terms what's going on in the radio that they just bought. I have even heard people on the air make comments like "I guess I'm going to have to send this radio to the shop. Every time I key the mike, the frequency display changes." This guy was using a repeater, by the way. Whether you test them on vacuum tube circuits or logic makes no difference. Make them have to LEARN SOMETHING to be able to answer the questions.

Very few people these days either have the time or the desire to build thier own gear, let alone the test equipment to make sure its working properly when its finished. They might make an attempt at repairing their store bought stuff if they had some basic knowledge of how they worked. At the very least they could tell if somethng was really wrong instead of sending it to the factory for working perfectly.

I agree on your testing ideas for the most part. On the air practices and rules would be a big plus. From what I hear on the air these days, a good portion of the current licensees could use re-testing on this (and I ain't talking about just the NCT's either, they don't hang out on 75 and 20 meters).

Two or three classes, with tests that yield licensees that KNOW something are what we need. And with respect to those who throw the rotten tomatoes you mentioned, no morse requirement will make any difference in that result. The person I was talking about earlier had passed the old Extra code test, morse was easy as fallling off a log for him. Couldn't find his butt with both hands, but could throw it down when it came to code.

I'm done now...again.

73's

Bryan

 

WHY do we let people compare ham radio to cell phones? A cell phone call is absolutely no different than a wired phone call 30 years ago. Nothing different. Nobody said "Why talk on ham radio, I can just call them on the phone" then. Why is it accepted now? The two modes of communications are totally and completely different.

If I wanted to talk to one person I know and have a private conversation, I would call him on the landline 30 years ago and I would call him on the cell now. No difference. Ham radio is different. You get on and never know who you might meet. Or you get into a roundtable discussion with half-a-dozen guys you know. Or you try to reach someone in a rare location. Or you bounce a signal off the moon (try THAT on a 1/3 watt 2-way radio aka cellphone). No similarity to a phone call at all. We must stop letting that be a comparison.

If somebody makes that comparison to you, I hope you explain the difference.