As most of you know, we have been trying to get a "ham cram" up and running.  I have been getting a lot of resistance from some of the older hams about this program. I often hear things like, "when I took the exam we had to bring a calculator and paper to work out the answers, there wasn't any question pool, you had to know all the theory and write a 2 page essay to answer each question, etc., etc........  Another thing I hear is that it will be just like CB if we make it easy to pass the tech test.

Well, I have some questions for these old timers with this mind set.  Why did the FCC change the rules?  Because hams would have gone the way of the dinosaur if they didn't change them.  This is fairly easy to prove, just go look at the charts showing the number of licensed hams over the last 30 years..  There are now over 700,000 licensed hams.

What this means is that we have a larger block of voters to express their displeasure with politicians who favor selling off our bandwith to commercial enterprises. And there a a lot of companies that want our portion of the RF spectrum.

I am sure even more people would pass up getting a license if you needed a degree in electrical engineering to be able to push the PTT with only 10khz per band to use. (If I were a street hustler I might say you need to make it easy, bait them in and then get them hooked).  In my opinion ham radio is an art that needs to be preserved, and we can't do that by setting up obstacles that many people will perceive as too hard for too little gain.

As far as the other license classes, we are the ones who should help teach the people who are motivated to learn more.  I was told many years ago that the cream will always rise to the top.  The cream is the richest and thickest part of the milk, with the skim milk being lighter and more watery.  People are like that,too.  You will always have people who have little or no ambition and no desire to learn more.  For these people a tech license is all that they want to achieve.

And then there are the people who have a desire to learn.  These are the people who we should spend as much time and energy as possible helping to become first class operators.  These are the people who will become true hams, the ones who like to tinker and experiment, constantly pushing the boundaries of their knowledge.

Please feel free to express your opinion of my thoughts and opinions.

Jack Hutchinson
KJ4NXD@arrl.net