Of course as I'm sure Greg knows, the old process did *not* ensure that creeps, loonies, and knuckleheads were kept out of ham radio. It just ensured that you had creeps, loonies, and knuckleheads who could copy code and draw a schematic. As a new ham in the early 1980s, I knew a 13 wpm General who no doubt took exams much harder than the ones I had to pass and who taught electronics at a technical school. One day, he blew his wife's brains out, threatened to kill a witness to this deed, and probably also killed his aged mother by pushing her down the stairs though that charge was never proved. He's doing life in prison for murder. He was always nice at my house, but I'm sure glad I never pissed him off. In the same era, I knew a 20 wpm Extra, an electrical engineer and good contester, who turned out to be a serial molester of teenage boys, including his own son's friends and his own friends' sons. Don't know where he is today, and don't care, except to say he no longer has a ham license. One of the best-known filthy mouths of the pre-Riley era was a broadcast engineer from the Washington, DC, area. Nice-looking guy, still has his Extra class license and is even an ARRL member, but back in the day he and his groupies dumped the linguistic equivalent of raw sewage on the HF bands. Plenty of the whackazoids our members used to raise the roof about, pre-Riley, were guys who knew electronics inside & out. Having that knowledge did not make them good citizens or sane human beings or responsible operators, but if you just looked at their technical qualifications and the ham radio exams they had to pass, you might have assumed otherwise. None of us were born knowing how to do this. We had to be willing to learn and others had to be willing to teach us, and to tolerate us while we muddled through. Since it has come to my attention on several occasions that I don't know it all, I am glad there are *still* hams out there who'll help me learn stuff and refrain from calling me a dunce when I don't get it right the first time. 73 - Kay N3KN