[Boatanchors] Upgrade question

[Bob Macklin]

Glen,

When I took the CW test in 1957 it was the 5 character groups.

Bob Macklin
K5MYJ
Seattle, Wa,
"Real Radios Glow in the Dark"

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Glen Zook" <gzook at yahoo.com>
To: "Adam Liette" <aliette at embarqmail.com>; "Gary" <xfrmrs at roadrunner.com>;
"Bob Macklin" <macklinbob at msn.com>
Cc: <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2008 9:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] Upgrade question


> No!
>
> The CW exam for your commercial test was 5 letter groups.  However, the CW
exam for amateur radio was plain text.  It was such for at least post World
War II and, I believe, before that.
>
> Now you did have to have "perfect" copy of at least 1 minute out of the 5
that were sent.  That meant 25 letters (numbers and punctuation marks
counted as 2 letters) in a row for Novice and Technician Class, 65 letters
in a row for General Class (there was no CW examination for Advanced Class),
and 100 letters in a row for Amateur Extra Class.  There was no option of
taking a written test for passing your CW requirement.  Of course this was
before the CW requirement was lowered to 5 words per minute.
>
> On a side note, at least in this area, the VE groups found that in
virtually every case if the "perfect" copy for 1 minute was not present that
the person failed the written exam.  Therefore, most of them started looking
at the "perfect" copy before giving the written exam since it took less
time.  If the person failed the "perfect" copy then they were given the
option of taking the written exam.  However, almost no one passed the
written exam after failing the "perfect" copy.  Now getting "perfect" copy
for at least 1 minute was always sufficient for passing the examination so
if the person got "perfect" copy they did not have to take the written exam.
>
> Glen, K9STH
>
> Website:  http://k9sth.com
>
>
> --- On Fri, 9/12/08, Bob Macklin <macklinbob at msn.com> wrote:
>
> From: Bob Macklin <macklinbob at msn.com>
>
> A comment was made about how much more difficult the 1960 era General exam
was than today's Extra exam.
>
> I would like to add a comment that in the 1960 era the CW exam was also
more difficult than the recent CW exam. In 1960 the CW exam consisted of 5
character groups where the characters were random rather than the text most
recently used.
>
>
>
>