[CW] Ain't it awful?

[Donald Chester]

>From: N2EY@aol.com

> >  The tragedy is that Incentive Licensing was a dismal failure in terms 
>of
>its
> >  intended purpose, to enhance the technical and operating expertise of 
>the
> >  amateur community.
>
>How so? Extras made up about 2% of the ARS in 1965. Today they are almost
>15%...?

Naturally, by conveying actual operating privileges instead of being a mere 
piece of wallpaper to boost a ham's ego, the Extra Class ticket drew 
increased interest.  And this ticket does require study.  What I am 
referring to is actual on-the-air technical competence and amateur interest 
in the technical aspects of radio. Once Incentive Licensing had gone into 
effect in 1968, the decline in interest in the technical aspects of amateur 
radio accelerated, if anything.  Look at the state of technical 
competence/interest in the amateur community as a whole today.

It was about 1968-69 that hams began to abandon homebrewing en masse. I 
recall one of the Incentive Licensing rallying cries was that "hams are not 
building anymore".  But in the late 60's and early 70's, parts for building 
transmitters could be had at hamfests for almost nothing, and existing 
homebrew rigs were going to landfills in droves, to be replaced by (usually 
drastically inferior quality) "new" factory-built radios.  I acquired much 
of my present-day radio parts warehouse from hamfests of that era.  People 
used to laugh when they saw me lugging large plate transformers, oil caps, 
transmitting variables, etc. to the car. (With today's prices for these 
items, I'm having the last laugh!)

The point is, immediately following Incentive Licensing, appliance operation 
became not only mainstream, but grew to include the vast majority of the ham 
community.  In a very few years, ham radio transformed from a 
technically-oriented radio service to what is now primarily a 
"communicators' hobby".  Compare magazines like CQ and even QST from the 
1953-68 era to 1970 and later, in terms of the number of technical articles 
and construction projects.  Even though the League has continued to 
encourage amateur experimentation, they have increasingly been willing to 
admit that experimenters and builders are becoming an ever smaller sub-group 
within the hobby. Except for increasing amateurs' skills at taking paper 
tests, what has Incentive Licensing done to reverse or even decelerate this 
trend?  From the very beginning it was a dismal failure in terms of its 
originally stated purpose.



>What mistake did the League make? They knew that flatout opposition was a
>losing game.

As I recall, the League initiated the idea with the famous editorial in a 
1963 issue of QST: "Isn't it time we returned to Incentive Licensing"?  As 
the debate heated up, League bashing by opposing amateurs became rampant. 
(Remember the Wayne Green editorials?)  I vividly remember watching League 
officials catch hell at hamfests on several occasions.  But what the League 
advocated in 1963 was a simple return to the pre-1953 class A-B licence 
structure, on the theory that the liberalisation of General class privileges 
was an experiment that hadn't worked. Many of the strongest advocates of the 
1963 proposal undoubtedly would have been opposed to sub-dividing the bands.

>The basic concept (of Incentive Licensing) is this: Hams who have full 
>privileges should have a
>significant
>amount of radio knowledge. But to require that level of knowledge from
>newcomers
>is not reasonable for most people. So the license system is set up so that
>there are
>licenses that require less knowledge but grant limited privileges.

That concept was adopted in 1953 with the Novice and Technician licence 
classes.  It arguably worked well until the advent of Incentive Lincensing.


>The real history question is - what caused the FCC to decide, back in >'63,
>that there
>was a serious problem in US ham radio that had to be fixed by >complicating 
>the
>license structure and raising the license requirements? Why was FCC >so
>unhappy with ham radio back then?

That's a good question.  I suspect the rapid growth in the amateur 
population that resulted from the success of the Novice program generated a 
sense of panic in some quarters.  I remember sharing a widespread feeling of 
uneasiness at the growth in popularity of "appliance operating" and decline 
in homebuilding.  Newcomers in the late 50's and early 60's were largely 
teenagers and young adults; the widely reported "generation-gap" of that era 
may have swayed some opinion.  Indeed, the rate of growth of that period was 
unsustainable, but compare that growth to today's stagnation, which 
continues in spite of efforts including Novice Enhancement, No-Code 
Technicians and finally, the Restructuring of 15 April, 2000.

A widely overlooked change that occurred with Incentive Licensing was the 
elimination of the Conditional Class licence.  For a number of years, 
persons living a mere 75 miles or more from an FCC examination point could 
take a test by mail, before a single volunteer examiner, that granted 
privileges equivalent to the General class.  The "beyond 75 mile radius" 
made persons living in the majority of the land mass of the continental 
United States eligible for the Conditional exam.  Needless to say, 
widespread fraud involved with the Conditional test may have influenced 
events that led to the perceived need for Inentive Licensing.  This was 
probably the only positive change, in terms of its intended purpose, to come 
out of the Incentive Licensing proceeding.

73,

Don K4KYV (Amateur Extra since 1963)



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