As far as Incentive Licensing, who cares at this point. It was
over 35 years ago. ARRL acknowledged years ago that it probably was not
the best proposal to support.
Pete, wa2cwa
The problem is that the legacy of Incentive Licensing still with us. Even
with the newly-expanded phone bands, the US amateur bands are still
segmented with an overly complex matrix of subbands defined according to a
combination of emission mode and licence class. Such a complicated amateur
subband system exists in nowhere else in the world today, outside of US
territory.
Not only did the League acknowledge years ago that Incentive Licensing
probably was not the best proposal to support, they have also admitted that
it has been a dismal failure in terms of its originally stated purpose, to
enhance the technical expertise of the amateur community. They have tacitly
admitted this by removing most of the in-depth technical articles from QST
and squirrelling them away in a more obscure publication, QEX, which members
must pay extra for. Their apparent justification is a belief that the
greater amateur community today is less interested in technical topics and
construction articles, and more interested in operating events, human
interest articles, etc.
With the curtailment of the significance of Morse Code with the elimination
of the code requirement for the amateur exams, I see no useful purpose in
maintaining the Extra class CW subbands, especially now that the exclusive
narrowband segments have been significantly reduced by the long-overdue
phone band expansion. I would go so far as to advocate the removal of the
last vestige of Incentive Licensing by doing away with licence class
subbands altogether, if the written exam for full amateur privileges (Extra,
General, Advanced, Class A or whatever you wanted to call it) were made more
comprehensive, at a level of difficulty comparable to that of the old
pre-Incentive Licensing General class exam, and the exact test
questions/answers withdrawn from publication.
Don k4kyv
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