Michael Coslo wrote:
Cmd Buzz Corey wrote:

John Smith wrote:

... the "anateur exams" are certainly no hinderence, they always
have
been as simple as pie--a college grad trained in the art of "test
taking" could study for a day and pass the most challenging

I think you need to go back and look at the early exams. There was
a
time when an applicant was required to actually draw a schematic of

various circuits and explaine how they worked.

Is that supposed to be hard?

Depends on the person. For someone who knows a little radio theory and
the regulations of the amateur radio service, none of the tests were
very hard.

Heck, I passed the old General and Advanced class tests in 1968 - at
the age of 14. That was the summer between 8th and 9th grade for me. No
big deal, there were younger hams than me with Extras back then.

The difference between then and now is the test *method* more than the
content.

And even after the exams
became multiple choice type,

(about 1960 for the General)

one had to know the material to get the
correct answer as the answers to the acutal questions were not
available.

Yeah. You'll find that question pool bugaboo in a lot of fields
these
days, including fields where if a person makes a mistake because of
not
knowing the material, lives may be lost.

Good or bad, I don't think FCC will go back to the old way.

There were study guides with sample questions, but no
questions pools with the exact answer available for memorization.

Now if you want *really* hard, make it no study guide, no question
pool, and the applicant has to do all the learning research with NO
idea
of what is on the test! 8^)

The old study guides were essay-type Q&A that outlined the general area
of
knowledge. One question could cover a *lot* of ground. The old Extra
study
guide was as much as 279 questions at one point.

If you
did not know the theory, then you probably weren't going to pass.
Again john smith knows not of what he speaks.

I took the tests from the question pools. For me, they were all
pretty
easy. They were not easy because of the question pools. They were
easy
because they were fairly basic material.

But you had seen the exact Q&A before, right?

What I have seen of the earlier test is that they too were pretty
basic. Any difference is not so great that those who came before need

not feel any superiority.

Not a question of superiority, but of test validity.

The difference between then and now is the test *method* more than the
content.

I aced the Technician test with the only study being the safety
questions.

I did study a bit for the General.

For the Extra, I spent a week taking the on-line tests. Questions
that
I knew the answer to, I got right of course.

Those that I got wrong earned me a trip to the books or online to
find
out why I got it wrong. By the time I was finished, I aced the test
just
about every time on line, and then in the actual test.

And I knew the material.

Elapsed time, one week.

For you.

But I bet you had more than a little electrical/radio knowledge before
you ever looked at a ham radio study guide.

Now the Morse code was another thing entirely. That was hard.

But then I'm just a dum nickel extra! ;^)

I bet it says the same thing on your license as it does on mine. With
no mention of dumb or nickles, Mike.

Each of us met the requirements in force at the time of being licensed.
That the
requirements changed over time isn't usually due to the people taking
the new tests.

Looking down on somebody today because they didn't take the same tests
you took years ago is kind of like getting mad at someone who paid less
for a VCR last week than you paid 20 years ago....


73 de Jim, N2EY