Ham radio, and licensing

I was discussing how licensing has changed over the years.

I was 13 years old when I got my first ticket in 1974, I had to drive about a 4 hour drive to Indianapolis, IN to take my exam in front of an FCC examiner. The question pool was secret, you had to have the knowledge, not memorize a bunch of questions. You had to take your morse code test, sending and recieving, they had a machine that had a bunch of head phones attached to it and you listened to the code through the headphones.

You had to get 1 minute of solid copy on your paper.

My Novice ticket if I remember right(it has been a few yrs) was only good for 2 years (originally it was 1 yr) and 75 Watts.

I was limited to xtal control, so I had crystals for a few different frequencies in the 80 and 40 meter band. I would call CQ on one of my xtal frequencies and had to tune my rcvr up and down the band to listen for a reply. Talk about inefficent use of bandspace!

Finally transmitters such as the Heathkit DX60 came out and you could hook a VFO to it and QSY up and down the band. That was so neat, you could actually get calls on the same frequency you transmitted on.

W1AW was my friend as I would listen faithfully to the code practice to get my speed up so I could get my General ticket within the 1 yr timeframe. W4OYI would get on the air and help me also by qsoing me and pushing me on my cw speed.

Finally, I made the trip to Indianapolis and sat for my General and passed it. 13 wpm code...By that time I was copying 20 wpm, but I was so nervous taking the test I barely copied the 13wpm.

Another year went by and I went to take my Advanced exam. That was the hardest written exam I think I have ever taken. It was even harder then my 2nd class Radiotelegraph Commercial ticket I eventually got. I know it was harder than my extra exam. There were tube schematics on it, one of them I remember was a tube type colpitts osciallator!

Then finally I got my Extra ticket. This one I ended up driving to Atlanta Ga and taking it. At that time, at Indianapolis, they would only give the exams like 4 times a year and they weren't giving the Extra in Indianapolis before college started and the only way to get it before I went to college was to drive to Atlanta and take it. By this time I was copying 25 wpm or better, but again in front of that FCC examiner, that 20 wpm sounded a lot faster.

But in those days of FCC examiners, they did have a license you could get sort of like the tests you take now. There was a ham license called the Conditional license. It granted basically the same priviledges as a General license, except you took the exam in front of another ham.

It was originally intended to be for people that had disabilities that prevented them from traveling to take the test in front of an FCC examiner.

This was the precusor to todays VE exams.

Like anything not monitored properly, there were abuses of the Conditional license process which led the FCC to re-examine some Conditional Licensees in front of an FCC examiner and eventually the FCC abolished the Conditional license.

Today the licensing process is totally different.

You no longer have to drive hours away to sit in front of an FCC examiner to get your ham license. The Novice license no longer exists and although some Advanced licensees are still alive once those licensees die out, there will no longer be any Advanced licenses.

Today you can get the Technician, General and Extra. You no longer have to know the code to get a ham license.

Today the license pools are published with the exact questions and answers to the test questions.

Today there are VEC's which accredit examiners and it takes 3 VE's to give tests. The FCC learned from the days of the Conditional that one tester is subject to impropieties, but if you have 3 you are less likely to have abuses of the system.(Although that is not a given as there have been some VE test sessions that have been discredited.)

Even though I have been licensed for 34 years and I am a CW operator, I am not going to sit here and preach that the old way was better. Times have changed and society itself has changed and most of all the focus on ham radio from the FCC's point of view has changed.

What hasnt changed over the years is the fact that the Amateur Radio Service has been a self-policing service and internally we try to correct the abuses we see or hear about. It is up to us as licensees and us Old Timers to not denegrate the new licensees but to teach the proper ways of operation and for us OTers to set the example for the newer licensees to emulate.

But self-policing hasn't been enough and over the years the FCC Spectrum Enforcement Division Riley Hollingsworth has been enforcing the Ham Radio rules and you can read the list of enforcement actions that the FCC has taken http://www.fcc.gov/eb/AmateurActions/Welcome.html


We need to continue to be active on the HF bands and especially our VHF and UHF bands, as spectrum allocation is getting very competative and there are certainly many services that would love to take away our frequency allocations. There is big money to be made by the government in frequency allocations and if we as a Amateur service do not make good use of our frequency allocations, then we could possibly look at losing frequencies in the future.

Yes, Ham radio has changed a lot over the years since 1894 when Marconi first sent a wireless radio signal across the English Channel. The Ham radio landscape has changed numerous times and probably will change again.

I can honestly say that Ham radio has given me one of the greatest pleasures in the past 34 years and that I hope it continues to give me pleasure, but also that it continues to flourish.

73, Jack K4SAC