RadioBanter - View Single Post

Dick Grady AC7EL · February 8th 10, 02:38 PM posted to rec.radio.amateur.moderated

On Sat, 6 Feb 2010 13:57:30 EST, wrote:

On Feb 6, 10:54?am, wrote:

[ snip ]

Today, it's darned near impossible to
radiate a signal outside amateur
spectrum unless you want to.

I disagree! There are lots of ways to do it.

Even inadvertently. In 2000, I bought an ICOM IC-746 HF/VHF
transceiver brand-new from one of the major ham radio stores. One of
the options in the menu was to beep when you tuned to the edge of a
band. I noticed that on some bands it did not beep at the edge. For
example, on 75 meters, as I tuned upwards to and beyond the 4.0 MHz
band limit, the radio did not beep until I got to 4.5 MHz. I connected
the rig to a dummy load, and sure enough I could transmit all the way
up to 4.5 MHz (well, actually 4.999 MHz).

[ snip ]

============
I would also suggest the licensing exam has not
become *easier* over
the years, only *different*.

I disagree, but the only way to really know would be to get hold of
actual exams from the various times and compare them.

Maybe to put it a bit
differently, we've
gone from deeply testing a few areas of knowledge,
to shallowly testing
a wide variety of knowledge.

That much I agree with!

But the test *methods* have also changed, and that makes a big
difference.

For example, answering an essay question is a completely different
thing from answering multiple-choice because with multiple choice you
*know* the correct answer is there; you just have to determine which
one it is. One cannot guess their way to a correct answer on an essay
or show-your-work problem, but with a multiple-choice question that has
4 choices there's a 25% chance of a right answer even if the person
knows nothing about the subject and chooses randomly. (The
multiple-choice SATs avoid this by assigning negative points for wrong
answers).

I'm a Volunteer Examiner, accredited by ARRL/VEC, so I have some
experience here. The current multiple-choice system is the most
practicable for testing at many sites in the field. My VEC sends to me
test question booklets with the required number (35 or 50) and
distribution of questions taken from the pool. They supply us with
templates to put over the answer sheets to grade the exams. Everything
that we do regarding grading is specified to the nth degree. This is
to protect us as well as to insure the integrety of the testing
process. If we were to switch to essay questions, I, and I suspect
most of my fellow VE's, would not feel competent to grade them. Grading
of essay questions is necessarily subjective, not objective.

I do like the idea of negative points for wrong answers. But, that's
not the program as we operate it. If we did deduct for wrong answers,
we'd probably have to reduce the passing percentage of 74% (26 out of
35) to something lower, say 65%. And any changes in this would have to
be approved by the FCC in Part 97.503.

[ snip ]

So the question is, given the test method of multiple choice exams, how
do we tailor the question pools to do the best possible job? We hams
have an element of control, because anyone can submit questions to the
QPC for inclusion in the pools. And there's no upper limit to the pool
size.

Of course a question that requires differential calculus to solve
probably isn't going to be accepted.

But they could do more in the concepts of things like Fourier analysis
and field theory, without having to work with big complicated
equations. I have a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering, so in
college I studied all kinds of complicated equations dealing with
Fourier analysis and field theory (and had to derive some of them on
closed-book tests). But after I graduated, I rarely had to apply those
equations directly, just know the concepts and apply them. The basic
concepts can be understood, at a qualitative level, by simple diagrams
and hand-waving.

Dick, AC7EL