Mike Coslo wrote:
wrote:
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
thesedays, 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.
Nope.
So it's really immaterial what the old exams were like, other than to
point out the differences. Newer hams have no choice in the matter -
they can't take the old tests even if they wanted to.
One more difference about the old tests, though: Judging by the
study guides, the old tests focused on a few subject areas in depth,
while the new tests cover more subject areas but in much less detail.
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?
Weell, the key word is "exact". I noticed that when I took my Extra
exam, many of the answers appeared in a different order than they were
in the question pool. I came away convinced that the person who
memorized the question pool was actually doing things the hard way.
The way most people would set out to "memorize" the Q&A is to simply
learn to associate the right answer with the question by any means
possible. You don't need a verbatim memorization nor any info about the
distractors.
That's a lot different than actually understanding the material.
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.
Absolutely.
But I bet you had more than a little electrical/radio knowledge before
you ever looked at a ham radio study guide.
Yup. I think that my level of expertise was just a little skewed. I got
sidelined onto computers fairly early in the 1970's. Then I worked
mostly in digital, then changed careers, going into photography,
videography, and 3-d animation (waaayy too many hats to wear, but
whatever) But I did have a good bit of electrical experience
So you knew most of the material already! And what you didn't know was
more of
an extension to your existing knowledge base in the electricity area,
rather
than a completely new field.
Now the Morse code was another thing entirely. That was hard.
Besides your auditory situation, it was hard for another reason: It was
new,
and did not represent an extension of your existing knowledge base the
way
learning some more electronic/radio theory did.
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.
Yup. My comment was mostly sarcasm. The only way that anyone knows my
"vintage" is by my callsign
Sort of. I know hams with 2x3 callsigns who have been Extras for 30+
years. They
just never went for a vanity call.
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....
HAR!
But isn't that true?
Back in 1997 I paid over $2k for a new Dell system. 200 MHz 32 MB
Pentium II, 17" Trinitron monitor, HP 820 printer, etc. Today you
couldn't get $50 for it (if you
could even find someone to buy it!) - in part because for $500 you
could buy a new Dell system that was an order of magnitude more
computer in almost every way.
Should I be mad at the person who spends $500 today because s/he got a
new Dell
for 1/4 what I paid 8 years ago?
73 de Jim, N2EY