[Milsurplus] Our Wonderful New

[J Forster]

Mike Morrow wrote:

> 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. [snip]

Relaxing the standards really does make sense. Times are very different than the 20s or even post WW II. Today, if you go out and buy a current (or even 20 year old) radio, it's pretty hard to really screw up the air waves. It's only if you are using much older gear do you really have to know what you are doing.  The technical safeguards now are built into the gear, not required of the operator. The BA crowd is really a tiny minority of emitters.

As to Morse, it's just not an issue for me as I'm a collector, not an operator. The sets I'd like to run would really pi$$ people off (like an ASB-5) with it's >1 kW pulses at 515 MHz.

FWIW,
-John