In article , "Dee D. Flint"
writes:

"Leo" wrote in message
.. .
Points well taken, Hans. I suggest, however, that the question (what
the amateur radio service would be comprised of if it were created
today) must be explored in order to validate what 'historical aspects'
of the hobby still apply in 2003 - a 'sanity check', if you will.

As I understand it, the ARS was created in early 20th century to
fulfil a need (to provide a pool of trained operators, I believe, with
experimentation and development mentioned as other objectives). This
mandate has evolved over the years, and maybe it is time to review and
bring it in-line with the requirements and technology of today.

Not really. That was the excuse that was used for the government to save
face. They really wanted to disallow amateur activity altogether when the
various radio services and regulations were initiated (see "200 Meters and
Down"). It took quite a bit of organized lobbying on the part of the
amateurs to maintain a place in the radio spectrum. After World War I, it
took a similar lobbying effort to get the government to allow the resumption
of amateur activity. They had shut it down for the war and it looked as if
they intended to keep it shut down.

Exactly, Dee. And it didn't stop there - amateurs had to fight for recognition
internationally as well, all through the 1920s. Amateur radio was only
recognized as a separate radio service by international regulations in 1927.

The whole concept of "radio for its own sake" evolved over time, and as K0HB so
rightly says, is still evolving. What it evolves into is mostly in the hands of
those who choose to become radio amateurs.

Note that the regulations did not contain any sort of "Basis and Purpose"
statements until 1951, when FCC insisted on writing such into the regs for each
service.

The ARS is certainly not a service born of regulations - but it exists
today because the regulators allow it to do so - if we don't have a
clear idea of specifically why it should continue to exist, or what it
should be composed of, how can we justify it if and when the time
comes? We cannot convince regulators to maintain CW testing, as an
example, if the best arguement that we can come up with is "history"!

I am convinced that all the regulators really care about wrt amateur radio is:

- Noninterference with other services
- Orderly on-air behavior by amateurs
- Reasonable level of use of allocated spectrum

Everything else is pretty much up to us.

It was put there by regulation for a reason - and it needs a reason to
survive. Regulators don't deal in nostalgia....and if a push comes to
approve a potentially multi-billion dollar rollout of a service like
BPL, they are going to be hard-pressed to stave it off on our behalf
without a solid justification of why the ARS is still important!

Yes once again it is time to fight. If all we can offer is our ability to
TALK on the radio, there isn't much justification for the continuation of
Amateur Radio with all the frequency privileges we have today.

Exactly. And it's not just amateur radio that is threatened by BPL.

I raised this question because, frankly, the vast majority of
arguements that I have read in this newsgroup have been driven by
emotion, nostalgia or historical references. If someone proposes that
CW should continue to have exclusive band assignments because it is a
great mode to use during emergencies due to its inherent readibility
through noise, and that CW testing should continue to ensure that a
pool of CW-competent operators is maintained for emergency comms, then
OK, good point - maybe it should.

But CW *doesn't* have any *exclusive* band assignments on HF/MF! Not one Hz!

There are lots of reasons to keep CW/Morse testing - and lots of reasons to let
it go. All reasons basically come down to someone's opinion, one way or the
other.

Although this is a good and valid point, those who don't know code and don't
want to learn it have successfully outshouted the proponents of code testing
so that the regulators, who know nothing of the merits of the code
themselves, look like they are going to go along with it.

Maybe.

OTOH, if someone proposes that CW
testing should continue because thats the way its been since the
beginning of time, then - who cares? What relevance does that
statement have to do with today? So what?

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

Successful businesses have learned to do this type of review on their
internal processes in order to survive, in the interest of efficiency
(and, for fun, watch what happens when some idiot tells the
departmental VP that something is being done because it has always
been done that way - wow! - never happens twice!). If something is
being done, and no one can properly justify it, then out it goes.
Replaced by a new and (hopefully) better process, or abandoned
altogether if no longer needed. We could learn something from this
too.

Sure!

But sometimes they learn after the fact that although they couldn't come up
with a justification to keep something, it turns out to be necessary to
function efficiently and they have to reinstate it.. Although touted for
decades as the wave of the future, "the paperless office" still has not
become a reality. We always need paper documents for something.

Excellent example. Offices today use more paper, not less!

Note that most of the concepts of the computerized office (mouse, graphical
user interface, computer at every desk, networking) came from Xerox's Palo Alto
Research Center (PARC) in the very early 1970s. The folks at Xerox thought
their core business of copiers would wither away as computers took over.....

Often when something is done a certain way, it's not just because "we've always
done it like that" but because of very good reasons that are not immediately
apparent to outsiders - or even insiders.

Someone has suggested that if amateur radio were invented today,
without the benefit of all of the history and tradition, it would be a
version of FRS or maybe CB - if that is true, we have a serious
problem when industry comes knocking for more of our frequency
spectrum. How do we convince the regulators that it remains an
important service, if we believe that?

Simple show them that we are a resource with unique skills and resources and
numbers that cannot be found in any other radio service.

Which is why any radio service continues to exist, really.

Of course we should keep the history of the service in mind as we
decide what should define it today. That's an advantage that we have
over those who created it initially - we can see what worked well,
what failed, and what still works - and pick and choose accordingly.
But to argue from a position of emotion, or vanity, or 'what has
always been' - type historical perspectives - that's a fool's game
plan.

Eliminating skill and/or knowledge requirements should always be approached
with caution and some degree of trepidation. We sometimes don't know what
we need until we no longer have the ability to use that skill and/or
knowledge. Even when projecting based on past experience, foresight is far
from 20/20.

It's also important to monitor the actual results of changes. For example, back
in April of 2000, code testing was reduced to a single 5 wpm test *and* the
written tests were reduced. Did we get lots more new hams? Nope - in 3-1/2
years, the ARS in the USA has grown by less than 10,000. What we did get was
lots of upgrades by already-licensed hams in the year or so following the rules
changes, then a slowdown to nearly the rates before the changes.

73 de Jim, N2EY