KI0JU Amateur Radio -- Extra Class

updated: 4-Mar-2006

When they reduced the code speed requirement for the Extra Class, I went in and took the written test. I only studied a couple of hours and yet I had only one wrong answer on my Extra class test. This is the highest class of license available, yet the test is trivial. The present tests are much too easy. You really don't have to know anything, you just read though a test guide and then go in and pass the test. It seems to me that a test should actually show that you know something useful about radio and electronics, but the present tests do not accomplish that goal.

As sort of a reward for getting the Extra Class license, I bought a little bitty amateur radio transceiver, the Yaseu VX-5R. It is an amazing piece of technology. It transmits on the 6 meter, 2 meter and 70 cm ham bands with 5 watts and receives almost any frequency from 550 KHz through 1 GHz. Utterly amazing little radio.

The technology that goes into a marvelous little device such as this is really not anything that the average, or even above average, amateur can pull out of a junkbox and whip up a little tranceiver.

The ever-advancing RF technology is both a curse and a blessing... on one hand we get products such as the VX-5R that were unimaginable a few years ago, but on the other hand we have effectively lost the ability to homebrew anything even close to the state of the art.

Background:

I was interested in ham radio by the age of about 13, but I quickly found that short wave radio listening and citizen's band radio would fill my needs to play with radio without having to learn that stupid Morse code. In fact, my entire career in electronics is due to a ham radio operator that always interfered with my Saturday morning episodes of Sky King. He was unwittingly the catalyst that changed the course of my life by introducing me to electronics.

In early 1997, my old hometown buddy, Rick Swain W8AIT, challenged me to go get my license and see what is going on with amateur radio today. So, during late Winter and early Spring of 1997, my main project was amateur radio.

It took me several weeks to learn the silly Morse code, but the written tests were very, very easy... too easy I think.

Thoughts about the condition of Amateur Radio:

In the early days of radio, the world of RF was a place for pioneers and inventors, a place of homebrewed equipment and a spirit of adventure. There was no other medium that offered the lure of world-wide communications, there was no other medium that was such a bold step into the unknown.

For many years, the amateur radio operator could homebuild receivers, transmitters and antennas that were on par with the best commercial offerings and the hams were able to establish RF communications that others often thought were impossible.

Even as recently as the 60's and 70's when CB became so popular, there was no other means of world-wide communications readily available. People were really hungry for some form of communications, and RF was a big hit.

But, over time, the situation has changed. High quality communications are now available world wide. Hit and miss radio contacts, fading reception and crackling static are really not very popular. The internet and cell phones are easier, faster and more reliable.

The majority of society simply doesn't care about ham radio, and why should they? It was never intended for the masses, it was for us oddballs who wanted to grab a soldering iron and a junkbox full of parts and create something. But alas, that pioneering spirit of radio innovation is largely dead.

And to further complicate matters, the state of the art communications have advanced so rapidly and require such specialized construction and assembly techniques, that the average amateur can't possibly build anything that even approaches the state of the art in features, functionality or miniaturization. And, as if those weren't enough obstacles, the Federal Communications Commission rules currently forbid us from using any advanced digital modulation schemes.

Sadly, the monetary investment required for the tools and equipment to produce state of the art products is out of reach of the average ham these days. The technology in a digital cell phone is mindboggling.

It is unfortunate that the hams, who were once the innovators and proponents of RF communications, have largely lost the ability to significantly advance the state of the art in communications. RF is big business nowadays, and the govenment officals, perhaps due to stupidity or perhaps due to $$$ in their pockets, tend to support the whims of big business.

It seems that ham radio is dying a slow, but inexorable, death due to the lack of technical innovation and lack of technical knowledge in the amateur ranks. Indeed, big business will soon own virtually all of the RF spectrum and there will be less and less opportunity for amateurs to make the sort of important contributions to the art and science of RF that were once so common.

That's a pity...