Last week, I taught a one-day Tech Class at DEFCON, arguably the premiere cybersecurity/hacker conference in the U.S. It was my fourth year teaching this class under the auspices of the Ham Radio Village. This year, there were 66 people in the class.
It was my first class with the updated question pool, and somehow, they’ve made it even more difficult to teach classes with this question pool. For example, they eliminated the question that required an applicant to calculate the length of a six-meter, half-wavelength dipole antenna, but kept the questions:
- T9A10: In which direction does a half-wave dipole antenna radiate the strongest signal?
- T9A05: Which of the following increases the resonant frequency of a dipole antenna?
What this means is that I have to basically teach the same material that I taught last year, but now this amount of class time covers only two questions instead of three. And, I’d argue that knowing how to calculate the length of a half-wavelength dipole antenna is more relevant than many other questions on the test.
On top of that, they kept a bunch of irrelevant or obsolete questions, including:
- T7A02: “Which term describes the ability of a receiver to discriminate between multiple signals?”
I’d argue that in the era of software-defined radio (SDR), the selectivity specification is hardly relevant any more. Obsolete questions like this one make it more difficult to teach the class because I have to apologize for teaching irrelevant topics. There are other obsolete and irrelevant questions in the question pool.
In my humble opinion, the question pool needs to become less of a random collection of questions and more of a teaching tool. The question pool should not only test technical knowledge and knowledge of rules and regulations, but also make it easier for ham radio instructors like me to teach newcomers what they need to know to become successful radio amateurs.
Ill be making some suggestions on how to do that in the future, too.
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