[ARC5] OT - FCC Will Soon Consolidate Commercial Radiotelegraph Certificates

Sandy ebjr37 at charter.net
Wed Jan 16 16:20:31 EST 2013


What were  the requirement reductions?  In the code tests or the written 
elements?   I was unaware of any change.  There were some "newbies" towards 
the end that were manning the Sealift ships that carried all the military 
stuff around that weren't familiar with sending messages to coast stations 
or keeping an abstract of messages, etc.  Some of them even had the "6 
months sea service, in the aggregate" waived because of a shortage in radio 
officers.  Most of the traffic was via the INMARSAT system on those ships 
anyway.

Some of the "old hands Sparkies" complained the military people knew 
absolutely NOTHING about ionospheric propagation.  One of them had a Navy 
type at Rota, Spain call him on the INMARSAT phone and request he listen for 
ROTA on a 4 Mhz channel.  Schedule was for around 1000 EST and the ship was 
laying offshore a good ways from the Hampton Roads area!  Another on one 
exercise trip with 2 of the RORO transport ships running around 20 miles 
apart, who also had a military crew aboard plus the usual civilians spent 
all day one day trying to establish a RTTY link between the ships on 
HF........unsuccessfully!  They did great with the military satellite!  Goes 
to show you how things had change.

I never managed to get my "6 months sea time" but did a bunch of sea trial 
runs.  Don't think I would have had any trouble handling CW traffic on 
MF/HF.  After INMARSAT was "common", all the fun went out of being the 
"Sparks"!

73,

Sandy W5TVW


-----Original Message----- 
From: Mike Morrow
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 12:46 PM
To: milsurplus at mailman.qth.net ; arc5 at mailman.qth.net
Subject: [ARC5] OT - FCC Will Soon Consolidate Commercial Radiotelegraph 
Certificates

I valued my second class certificate more than any other.  After the
qualifications for its Morse exam were significantly reduced by the FCC
about 20 years ago, it was no longer worth $50 ($35 renewal fee plus
photos for the new license) every five years to renew.

73,
Mike / KK5F
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