Actually, license classes have ALWAYS been certificates of achievement. They showed that the licensee achieved a passing grade on the license tests in use at the time. As for activity, there used to be a requirement for renewal that a licensee "operate" for so many hours in the last so many months of the license term before renewal. But such "operation" could be almost anything, including calling CQ with QRPP and a bad antenna on a dead band. The "activity" requirement was so meaningless and easily met that it was dropped decades ago. 73 de Jim N2EY
"...calling CQ with QRPP and a bad antenna on a dead band." Ah! So, you've SEEN my station ! ha ha 73 de Ray ..._ ._
Exactly. What would the motivation be for a person to upgrade to Extra if they had no interest in HF?!
I can think of three motivations: 1) Vanity callsign 2) VE qualification 3) No more "when are you going to upgrade?" or "you should upgrade" stuff from others. 73 de Jim, N2EY
Did that, got the bruise and the shirt, not taking any guff from anyone; kind of like John Wayne toilet paper.
We did 2 at a time. We had 3 stations setup, and about a dozen radios available if anything went wrong with one. But for operating, if SSB was running, only one digital guy operated. That is how we caught some time to chat/nap/play with the radios. Overall it was tiring but a great time.
Well their reaction makes no sense but if you had fun then you are a winner! Can’t wait for next Field Day when I hope to be back on the air after being radio silent since 2012! 73
Category 2A. Good plan! Hopefully there were always 2 stations on the air. Wait till next year!! 73 de Jim, N2EY
We didn't always do 2 stations, sometimes they didn't tell us when ssb quit. It was nice for most of the night we could run 2 radios on 20m at the same time without interference. And about 3am we had no new takers on cq or new calls on the bands (ft8) so we shut down for a few hours. Also, since it isn't really a contest, I spent some time giving tours, showing off antennas, explaining radio propagation to new people, etc. If someone just came to our table, I stopped and showed them how we had it all setup. I had a 20 year old radio setup with rigblaster to the computer - and I showed how it all worked together. Some of these guys have old rigs and didn't know they could do digital modes. The other guy had his 7300 that just plugs in one cable. I wanted to show the old and new tech working together and we talked about some of that. I had an older laptop, he used a surface pro (very portable). Basically we did a lot of contrasts to show guys that they can do it with whatever they have already. We are already planning next year!
