Yesterday, I received the minutes of the July 2016 ARRL Board meeting. The minutes are frustratingly vague, but sometimes they provide a little insight into the workings of the ARRL.
Two thing stuck out on my first reading of the minutes:
- Item 13: “Mr. Imlay presented the report of the General Counsel. He summarized what he termed as a very productive meeting with FCC Special Counsel Laura Smith, focusing on improvements in the Amateur Auxiliary / Official Observer program, especially in light of the reduction of FCC field offices.” I’ve always thought it would be interesting to be an OO and wonder if this portends more responsibility and authority for OOs.
Item 20: “Mr. Gallagher presented the report of the CEO and entertained questions. He reported that his focus is currently on prioritizing resources to work within the recently adopted Strategic Plan. His goal is to position the organization to be ready to address a new demographic of potential new licensees in the changing Amateur Radio market landscape.” I’d like to hear more about what our new CEO thinks will be the “new demographic.”
- Item 29: “On the motion of Dr. Boehner, seconded by Mr. Olson, it was unanimously VOTED by roll call, that “Within the Rules and Regulations of the Field Organization, every instance of the department name ‘Membership & Volunteer Programs’ be replaced with ‘Field Services and Radiosport.'” I find this kind of curious. Sure, it’s only a name change, but it’s almost as if they de-emphasizing membership services and volunteer programs.
- Item 41: “THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that an ad hoc committee be established to examine the current license exam requirements for the Technician Class license and make recommendations for change, including consideration of a new entry license class, to the Board for possible changes that might be recommended to create a more targeted examination with a more limited set of privileges that would attract a new generation of amateurs.” This was proceeded by a lot of “whereases” that basically say that we’ve been without a Novice Class license for beginners for 15 years, and that the requirements and priveleges of the Tech license might not be the most appropriate for newcomers. I know that I’ve received e-mail supporting a very simple beginner’s license, one that requires passing a very simple test and giving the recipient some very limited priveleges. I’m not sure that we need a fourth license class, though. What do you think?
Bob K0NR says
Dan,
I am surprised that the entry level license idea is on the table. I don’t see the Tech license as that big of a barrier to entry. (I think we have lots of evidence that people can pass the exam after a one day class.)
I’ll try to keep an open mind on this and listen to proposals. What operating privileges would be assigned to this license? The old Novice bands? (I don’t think so.)
73, Bob K0NR
Dan KB6NU says
I was a bit surprised, too. I don’t know for sure, but I can only guess that it will be some kind of FM/digital license with few, if any HF priveleges. A similar idea was floated a couple of years ago, but never went anywhere.
I also got an e-mail from someone six or eight months ago, suggesting a new Novice license that would require an even simpler exam than the Tech exam—perhaps even one that could be taken online—but only allow very low power operation. It always did seem kind of crazy to me that we give Techs full power priveleges on VHF and UHF.
Mike WH6YH says
Dan,
As for the new demographic, I believe this population will largely be represented by those that work in various infrastructure positions like Police, Fire, EMS, Air Traffic Control, FEMA/EMA (see news about Specialty Calls), assorted levels of public sector (city, county, state) officials (most likely their support staff), where many of these folks may be told you need to have a amateur license, as an ancillary requirement…“just in case”. My basis is that we have observed a massive movement at all levels (County, State, Federal) in the past almost two decades towards disaster response and the support apparatus that allow these to operate during emergencies. I won’t supposition whether this is good or bad and will leave that to others; this is simply my attempt to aggregate recent news releases with some personal observations of whom my local club has licensed in the last several classes. I completely agree on the vagueness of the minutes.
73 Mike WH6YH
Walter Underwood K6WRU says
I printed out some Technician exams and had Boy Scouts try them. They worked in small groups, but they probably got 50% of the questions right with no studying. These were high school students with a fair amount of STEM classes, but still, not that hard.
But it is true that we don’t have an entry-level HF license. We used to have that.
The UK “Foundation licence” is a 26 question test with full HF privileges limited to 10W.
http://rsgb.org/main/clubs-training/for-students/foundation/
Frequency and power limits:
http://licensing.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/spectrum/amateur-radio/guidance-for-licensees/ir2028.pdf
RickB KA8BMA says
New licenses aside, obfuscate is the operative word.
Bob K0NR says
Perhaps the thing that needs to get teased apart here is the role that HF plays in ham radio and how the licensing structure needs to support that. The old Novice license was obviously HF/CW oriented so it got the newbie on the air working distant stations. But the 5 wpm Morse code requirement was a hurdle that required substantial work to overcome. Also, CW is fun but its not irrational to see it as an old communication technique. The Tech license (today) as the entry point is not the difficult of an exam but doesn’t get the licensee into HF. (OK, maybe if 10m is smoking hot at the time you get your license, but not generally.)
I am completely fine with people that see the Tech license as all they want to do. I am clearly biased towards operating 50 MHz and higher, so I can get a lot of enjoyment at the Tech level. But we know that Real DX as most people define it comes with HF operating. So someone entering the hobby with that in mind needs to get to a General license to have a decent set of operating privileges.
There’s probably a future blog post here for me. :-)
73, Bob K0NR
Dave New, N8SBE says
1. is an example of the recent government agency tendency towards downsizing/abandoning their roles, and instead expecting citizen or religious organizations to take up the slack. Kind of an “unfunded mandate”, if you will. I find the practice annoying, if not downright deceitful.
2. This seems to come from ARRL’s new marketing spin. It’s evidenced by such things as sprucing up the web site, QST (if it can ever be really modernized), and materials aimed at the maker crowd and younger folks.
3. The renaming is a result of an internal re-organization, where the contest branch was subsumed into field services (which covers quite a bit). I suppose if you need to rename the new organization, you might as well go for the glitz.
4. Seems this comes from a clamoring in the field for what amounts to a ‘family’ license, where everyone can get a cheap Pofung VHF/UHF HT without needing to know anything. There are a group of Chinese manufacturers/importers that are anxious to open the market for a veritable flood of these radios they can sell to the millions of new licensees they think will come from this new license. Many decades ago, the UK wisely bucked the manufacturers/importers that wanted to flood their country with CB radios, having saturated the US market with them. If you thought that killing the Morse requirement was going to create a CB-like influx on the US ham bands, just wait until this new entry-level license goes into effect.
Bob K0NR says
Dave N8SBE,
Ah, so, the operating privileges associated with the new entry level license are obvious:
– 2m and 70 cm
– FM only
– 5 W RF power limit
– radio must cost less than $50
73, Bob K0NR