It’s not been the Curmudgeon’s intention to devote appreciable coverage to the Amateur Radio Service (ARS) in these blog postings. A majority (perhaps most) of today’s telecommunications professionals are no longer licensed hams, although in past decades they most likely would have been. However, two recent personal events again brought the ARS into focus. In the first, earlier this year the Curmudgeon (today an Amateur Extra Class licensee) celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of earning his first ARS license, which was the (former entry-level) Novice class ticket. The second event was receipt of a gift of some computer CD-ROMS containing sets of page image files for the historic 1930 through 1959 issues of QST Magazine (the principal ham journal, published by the American Radio Relay League).
Prompted by these two events, the Curmudgeon took a nostalgic look back at the changes in the Service (within the United States) over the past half-century and more. And the following three posts are the result. This series is a thoughtful reflection from someone who has “lived it!” and who has been on the air continuously (though not necessarily daily) for all that time. These very personal views will probably not reflect the thoughts of, and may not necessarily please, today’s recently-minted hams who don’t have this length of background. YMMV!
The conclusions from this review can be summarized as: “Today’s ARS is certainly not your Grandpa’s ARS. But in comparison with today’s, Grandpa’s was arguably more interesting, more personally rewarding, and perhaps a better experience, overall!”
Predictably, five decades have brought an enormous amount of change to the ARS. The communications technology in routine use today would have been barely recognizable in 1960. But technology is neutral, and in the Curmudgeon’s opinion it’s within the sociology of the ARS that much has been lost. Today’s disturbing negative trends affecting the Service lie within two general areas: “The Dumbing-down and Consumerization of the ARS” and “The Ascendency of ARS Licensee Ego as a Principal Organizing Force.” We’ll look at the first trend in this post, the second trend in the following piece, and conclude in the third post with a general look both backward and forward.
Antique Homebrew Ham Station – ca. 1920
It’s arguably the case that today’s ARS, as reflected particularly by its licensing structure and secondarily by increasing “consumerization” (see below), has been “dumbed down” compared to yesteryear’s. This deliberate change is probably intended to maintain the total number of licensed US operators at current levels or even to increase the number, as a forward-looking defense against possible future loss of allocated spectrum because of “low user numbers.” And the results have been predictable: the Service now has a larger but a less knowledgeable and less motivated group of cohorts than it did in earlier times.
Two major licensing exam changes highlight this dumbing down. First, fifty years ago every applicant for an ARS license had to demonstrate some proficiency in the Morse (more accurately, the International) Code and, second, as a standard practice in that earlier period the verbatim questions (and answers) for the written examinations were never published in advance. Thus an applicant in those earlier days had to devote a sustained period of time to studying and learning, as there was no way of finessing the Morse Code exam. And at least some basic understanding of radio fundamentals was necessary to correctly answer the unfamiliar exam questions. Failure of either part of the examination was a quite real possibility for the poorly-prepared, and weekend “exam-cram” classes didn’t exist then as they do today.
Today the Morse Code has been eliminated from the examination process, and those individuals with good memory retention and possession of openly-published copies of the verbatim exam question pools can obtain licenses without understanding much, if indeed anything, about the basic engineering, operating, and legal principles underlying the Service. Licensing is now perfectly set-up for the casual, lightly-interested hobbyist.
This is NOT to assert that use of operator-generated Morse Code, with an information transmission rate for a moderately skilled operator equivalent to about 17 Baud, is the only or even the best means of wireless message transmission. There are other, technologically superior character transmission methods in use now; neither is “CW” the Curmudgeon’s most favored operating mode.
Or to assert that being able to correctly calculate “how close in operating frequency just above the 7000 kc/sec Amateur band edge could a quartz crystal with a frequency tolerance of 0.005% be ordered with the expectation that it would operate within the band?” is a highly useful skill in today’s telecommunications industry! No, rather the salient point here is that these earlier requirements did provide verification that the successful applicant had mastered new skills and might — just might — continue to do so after receiving a license!
Paralleling and complementing this devolutionary licensing change, the explosion of the market for commercially manufactured, made-for-purpose Amateur radio equipment has turned today’s Service into a hobbyist-consumer’s paradise! To some extent this trend was inevitable, as circuit complexity in the era of integrated circuit electronics long ago moved past the point where most Amateurs could design, build, and test-and-align major radio systems at home. And in truth, fifty years ago (and even earlier) most Amateurs used commercially-manufactured receivers, typically containing a minimum of eight vacuum tubes and often with significantly more.
But the QST magazines of the time demonstrated that there was lively activity in home-designed and/or -built transmitters, power supplies, antennas, and other necessary bits of Amateur stations. A newly-minted Amateur might purchase (or even be given) his first Novice CW transmitter (often, a previously-owned one), but then he could move up to other possibilities. Transmitter kits were offered by such familiar (and long-gone) companies as Heath, EICO, E. F. Johnson, Knight, and others. Military and commercial surplus electronics was converted to Amateur operation by enterprising hams. And “home brew” construction-from-scratch was much in evidence. By these means the early licensees learned and increased their understanding and skills.
Today almost all this is gone. It is not possible for most Amateurs (including the Curmudgeon) to home-build the equivalent of the sophisticated, manufactured solid-state transceivers (i.e., integrated transmitter-receiver packages) now in general use. The “top end” of the ARS equipment market has been captured by the manufacturers, as it has in other areas of consumer electronics. But the bottom end is still available for home construction and experimentation: small accessories, necessary and simple radio test systems, almost all antennas, antenna tuners, power supplies, etc.
Modern, consumerized amateur transmitter – receiver
However, many newly-minted Amateurs will not attempt even this much, preferring to purchase everything deemed necessary and to just “plug it in.” It is likely that a significant number of today’s licensees, as part of our contemporary US “plug-in culture,” do not own soldering irons, and that some cannot even solder necessary RF connectors to antenna transmission lines! [Of interest, the British explicitly test their Amateur Service applicants for this exact connector-soldering ability in their intermediate-level (equivalent to the U.S. General Class) licensing exams! The same UK exam requires an applicant to home-construct and then to demonstrate a functional radio-electronics project.]
Thus over the last half-century Amateurs and their culture have moved from a Service comprised of a significant number of knowledgeable home experimenters who could, and did, make contributions to “the radio art,” to a Service wherein the idea of home experimentation and striving for personal improvement has essentially vanished for most licensees. A thin veneer of professionally-qualified ham-engineers still carries on some very advanced ARS developmental work at home, but they are a minuscule minority. Rather, for most of today’s ARS licensees “Bigger transmitters, bigger antennas” are the chief order of the day, these items are readily available for purchase in the manufactured-equipment market, and the cost be damned! The “consumerization” of the Service has triumphed.
What do you think?
“Let’s keep the universe safe for RF!”
The Old RF Curmudgeon
I’ve only been a licensed amateur for 43 years. I agree with some of that but not with all of it.
1) For a lot of hams, the reason they homebrewed, converted surplus and built kits back-when was cost. New and used manufactured ham gear was incredibly expensive then (when you factor in inflation).
According to the Westegg inflation calculator, what cost $1 back in 1959 cost $7.28 today. So when you see a 1959 receiver priced at, say, $300, that’s the equivalent of $2184 today.
For a lot of hams, it was either DIY or don’t get on the air.
2) The technology of those days required that you know something just to put a legal signal on the air. Most ham rigs then required tune-up, reading meters, interpreting analog dials, etc. And it wasn’t all just “tune for maximum smoke”, either.
3) Look carefully at the study guides of those times and you’ll see that they cover certain subjects in depth (like the crystal-ordering problem) but almost completely ignore others (receivers, antennas).
I think the old exams were made up of questions that responded to problems experienced. For example, the focus on frequency calculations was so that hams would know where the band edges were and how to stay inside them – because some hams strayed. The problems on power supplies and filters were in response to signals with hum and other problems. All the stuff about lowpass and highpass filters, neutralization, proper tune-up, splatter-and key-click filters, etc., were in response to spurious emissions from ham rigs, TVI, etc. Ohm’s Law problems were to insure that hams could calculate power input accurately. Etc.
4) The main reason FCC turned over amateur license tests to the VEC system in the early 1980s was to save money. (They turned over commercial licensing to private contractors, too.)
In the old days FCC maintained offices with exam facilities in many major cities, and sent traveling examiners to smaller cities on a regular schedule. They also prepared the exams and did all the processing.
All that work was done by paid Federal employees, who had decent pay and benefits. The offices, while spartan, cost money, as did the traveling expenses. For a few years in the 1960s there were exam and license fees, but they didn’t last beyond the early 1970s.
The VEC/QPC system eliminated all that cost. Most of the work done by paid Federal employees was taken over by unpaid amateur volunteers.
It was all part of “getting the government off your back” in the early 1980s. Deregulation and all that.
5) Back then, the Federal government took a very active role in the regulation of radio. They’d seen the chaos of pre-1912 maritime radio, and 1920s broadcasting, and wanted no more of that. They also knew how much havoc a malfunctioning transmitter could cause. The FRC (which became the FCC) was created to deal with it.
The solution was licensing of both operators and of stations. Those in charge knew, understood and supported the concept of the skilled, knowledgeable, licensed Radio Operator in all radio services.
In some services the required skills and knowledge would be mostly technical, in others they would be mostly operational, and in most a mixture of operational and technical, but in all cases the licensed Radio Operator was indispensable.
There were Amateur licenses, Commercial Radiotelephone licenses and Commercial Radiotelegraph licenses. There were station licenses and operator licenses. There were several operator license classes, serious test requirements, and a whole flock of endorsements for things like radar.
Amateur Radio was often the first step in the licensing process of commercial operators, though not all commercial operators started out as hams.
The regulations created not only a lot of jobs but a whole profession. Every radio service needed FCC-licensed Radio Operators of various levels for various tasks. Whether it was routine transmitter checks at a daytime-only AM BC station, running a vital maritime shore station, or any of dozens of other jobs, the FCC-licensed Radio Operator was an absolute necessity, by law. And these were pretty good jobs, with decent pay and benefits.
You could have a Ph.D. in EE, the Nobel Prize in physics, years of military radio experience, etc., etc., but without the proper License you were not a Radio Operator and could not legally do any of the Radio Operator’s jobs.
The end result was that for several decades a commercial license of the right type, plus a high-school-equivalent education and a clean record, were practically a Golden Ticket to a decent-paying career. This doesn’t mean all the jobs or the licenses were easy to do or get, nor that a Radio Operator didn’t have to know his/her stuff. But it was a way for folks who knew something about Radio to get a decent living without a college degree and without a whole bunch of low-priced competition, both domestic and “offshore”.
None of the licenses required anything close to the knowledge of an four-year EE degree. Nor were they meant to.
It was a Good Thing. Too good, in fact.
The Captains of Industry didn’t like paying for all those licensed Radio Operators, nor their benefits, for what seemed to them to be simple, easy jobs. Unionized or not, the License requirements meant the Captains couldn’t hire just anybody for the jobs, nor could they combine certain jobs to reduce the head count, nor could they neglect doing certain things to reduce expenses. Nor could they export the work.
So the Captains of Industry got the regulators, and the regulations, changed.
Over a number of years they succeeded in all but eliminating the concept of the skilled, knowledgeable, *licensed* commercial Radio Operator. Saved lots of money and aggravation. All we have left now are pieces of the old rules and requirements.
And since they did it for commercial services, some of that was also applied to the Amateur Service. But the Amateur Radio Service is still all about the technically knowledgeable, operationally skilled Radio Operator.
At least to some of us, anyway.
Some folks just don’t seem to understand that concept. Or if they do, they want to stamp it out forever.
73 de Jim, N2EY
Ham radio has always been a community with camaraderie and opportunities for building technical knowledge. The “dumbing down” of the ARS is unfortunate as many newcomers just buy the radio and plug it in without any thought to how it works. Of course, we have compromised other establishments in our society the last 20 years including to some degree the standards in our public school systems as well. The information superhighway hams ride on everyday allows folks to get information without getting their hands dirty building devices. Although the cell phone is an enormous invention and the networks that support it are elaborate schemes, one should have a basic understanding of radio propagation to appreciate why you may encounter a “dropped call”. All cell phones have a “transmitter” and I can testify the Tempo One HF transceiver I had as a novice in 1982 operates on the same fundamental principles as a Samsung SmartPhone. I actually “worked on” (optimized) several Smart Phones by matching the phone antenna to the power amplifier. So the EE course in transmission lines and antennas is still needed today.
Morse Code is another requirement that was eliminated and although this may encourage hams to get licenses, I submit that “CW” is not difficult for someone who wants and can learn at a middle school level. Learning CW is a kin to learning your ABCs or the basic musical notes. Once you get the “rhythm” of CW and memorize the symbols, the language becomes easy to understand. When it comes to weak-signal performance, CW is a clear leader on the HF bands. CW typically has a higher Carrier-to-Noise (C/N) ratio than SSB and is more practical in some cases than voice. CW has a distinct advantage since CW transceivers are inherently less complex and hence less expensive and easier to construct than, phone transceivers. For example, the Small Wonder Labs & “Rock Mite” QRP CW transceiver kit retails for US $35. Do you know of any comparably priced SSB equivalent? One of the objectives of amateur radio is to encourage home construction. For today’s hams-to-be, I would encourage kit building and we have a some USA made companies like Elecraft to fill the Heathkit void.
73′s
Chris, W4CKH
As with most things that evolve with time, technology has played a big part in reducing the need to ‘know how it works on the inside’ to ‘knowing how to operate it’, be it ham radio, cooking or other previously manual labor oriented tasks. Comparitable to the examples above, half a century ago many people did not have the instant convienence of throwing in a pre-packaged meal into a microwave and pushing the START button. They had to know some of the basics of culinary art to make a meal, although many families were starting to migrate towards eating out and simplifying the evening meal during that period. Now, with the advancements in electronic kitchen gizmos, even folks who know nothing about cooking or culinary prepare a full menu truly ‘like Grandma used to make’ and in a fraction of the time it took her to do it.
I feel I was lucky (I guess that would be the proper terminology) to have been introduced to ham radio and obtained my first license (it too was the Novice Class as mentioned above) in a time when the need to learn something about the radio art was still required to pass the test. I like to think I have my nearly 30 year career in electronic engineering to show for the seedling effort that my foray into ham radio those 34 years ago planted. I don’t attempt to lessen the accomplishments of those that followed me in getting licensed in later years but I would like to think that if someone was going to devote the time and energies to get the license, obtain and setup a station and operate it that they would want to also learn more about it technically in order to be able to get the most out of the time and monetary investment. Maybe I’m wrong but that is just the way I personally look at it. Not to say that someone has to or even would want to persue a PhD in Electical Engineering once they have taken the Technician Class test and obtained that shiny new Tech license but rather they should learn all they can about the equipment that they are using as well as the techniques and theory about the overall radio station they are operating. Not only should this make them a better operator but also help emmensely in operating within the FCC regulations that they are still bound by legally.
Now many people will say that the original blog and my response here is pure bunk and they should not have to crack a book nor turn a page once they have the license since they simply want to operate and talk to their friends on the radio. They are absolutely legally correct, no argument to that fact from me regardless of the fact I feel thay are shorting themselves much of the enjoyment and richness that the hobby has to offer those willing to put forth the meager effort to learn. But to each his or her own, that is fine. I just find it totally foreign to the way that I, a technically oriented ham radio operator, wants to participate in the hobby.
Gene W5DQ
I have been studying for a license, and I have been listening to the airwaves. I have scanned the local (San Diego) 2M and 70CM repeaters. I have heard people who just like to get on and talk, and I have heard people talking about building antennas. There are people using the WIN system for a nightly quiz game net (ongoing for over 30 years I believe, so not a “new dumbing down” issue), and people BUILDING the WIN system. I heard a couple of guys talking about building Yagis, impedance matching, baluns, and all the goodies … and then one of them got sent to bed by his mom (not today’s smartphone teenager).
I picked up a couple of QSTs, and they still contain do-it-yourself features, homebrew, and reviews of kits. Maybe its not cover to cover.
I’m old enough (47) to have an old-timer attitude. I recently read that Morse code use has actually picked up since the requirement was dropped. People who want to do it will (I am tempted, but I don’t want to start there), and those who don’t won’t, even if you force them to learn. (I read a comment recently from another OM who thought it ironic that you had to prove proficiency in Morse code to be allowed to stop using it.
Yes, the Tech license is pretty easy to get. If that bothers you, the Extra is not. If you want to stay in the rarefied air of those who know electronics, get an Extra and go hide away in the extra segments of the HF bands.