[Milsurplus] Our Wonderful New

[Mike Morrow]

Dave wrote:

>Heard yesterday on 75 meters, new "Extra" section...

It's been a long long time since the US Amateur Extra Class license was an indication of any type of technical or operator expertise held by the licensee.  But that's also true of other FCC licenses as well.  

I always considered the commercial Second or First Class Radiotelegraph license to be the top and best indicator of operating and technical skill based on an FCC license held.  The written tests were the same for both license classes.  Going back to pre-WWII times, the Morse tests for Second Class Radiotelegraph required receiving and *sending* perfect copy for at least one minute out of a five minute test session.  There were two distinct tests:

1.  Twenty wpm plain language.
2.  Sixteen wpm random code groups.

Though it seems very slow, the 16 wpm test was for many candidates the worst part.  As few as five copy errors out of the 400 characters sent in five minutes could result in failure, if the errors were spaced just right such that one minute of perfect copy wasn't achieved.  And being random, you couldn't correct your copy afterward by the context of characters correctly copied.

The First Class license required 25 wpm plain language, 20 wpm code groups, and had a service requirement at a public correspondence station.  That last requirement kept many professional Morse operators who served only in stations that did not accept public correspondence (like miltary, airline, or police networks) held at the Second Class level even after decades of service.

The written tests contained ten percent schematic drawing and other essay-type responses.

So what did the FCC do a couple of decades ago to save them any effort??  In the early 1990s they began to give credit for the commercial license Morse tests if one held a ham Extra class license!  But twenty wpm plain-language receive-only multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank ham Morse tests didn't begin to demonstrate the skill level required by the traditional commercial Morse testing.  I let my license expire following this relaxation of exam requirements.

The First Class Radiotelephone license exam was also a bit of a challenge, so what did the FCC do?  In the early 1980s they abolished it, and renamed the old Second Class Radiotelephone license as the General Radiotelephone Operator License.

So, don't look for any license issued by the FCC, in any service, as a good indicator of what to expect from the holder.

Mike / KK5F