Hi Jay, It was good to chat with you last Friday. I was in Connecticut to attend the SM training course, but of course I also paid Tom a call. Gave me his $#!(*+$ cold, he did ….. I’ve been mulling over your comments concerning the intro license proposal. You are not the only person who has suggested a scheme with more power, but fewer frequencies, so I wanted to give this some serious thought. After much contemplation, I’m still convinced that low power, rather than limited frequencies, is the best tool to use in differentiating between intro class licensees and the rest of us. Here are my reasons: 1. The old novice license died for several reasons, including lack of phone privileges and “ghettoization” of the license class by limiting frequencies. Limited frequency and mode space seems likely to concentrate intro licensees into spaces inhabited only by other intro licensees. This is not what we want. Instead, we want intro licensees to spend most of their time talking with people of higher license classes. The way to learn and improve is to play with people who are better than you. 2. QRP implies cheaper gear. All other things being equal, a QRP rig is cheaper than a QRO rig. This point should not be overdone; the differences are not huge, but they do exist. Furthermore, it is more common to see very stripped down and simplified rigs at QRP power levels; more stripped and simplified than simple power reduction would dictate. This may be the bigger cost savings. 3. QRP implies cheaper and easier kits. This is certainly true for the same reasons as cited above concerning cost, though, as with cost, the point should not be overemphasized. 4. Low power implies less QRM to others. I suppose that new users are more likely to make mistakes that cause unintended QRM (intentional interference is another matter entirely). I know I did; somewhere in the archives I have a 20 meter OO report from my novice days. Something about my 40 meter harmonic … Of course, a similar result can be partially achieved by limiting frequency and mode, but this cure results in the ghettoization problem note in 1) above. 5. Low power implies less RFI to others. Although it is certainly not impossible to generate RFI with a 5 Watt rig, I do not personally know of any such case. Of course, RFI problems involving hams are usually the fault of badly designed or overloaded consumer electronics. But that’s not really important, particularly to a new ham faced with an irate neighbor. Better that a newcomer learn the ropes before having to deal with TVI. 6. 50 Watts, a feature of the most popular current intro class proposal (NCVEC), is insufficiently differentiated from 100 Watts, which is more or less the standard non-amplified power – only 3 dB or half an S unit. If we use 5 Watts as the limit, the difference becomes 13 dB or 2 S units. This is far easier to police, both from a legalistic perspective (which is only marginally important, since almost no one is ever prosecuted for too much power), and from a sociopolitical perspective (social pressures have on the whole turned out to be the most important enforcement tool in the Amateur Radio Service.) 7. There are few HF rigs currently in the 50 Watt power range. There are 5 Watt rigs, and a few 20 Watt rigs. There are also 5 Watt kits. 8. My experience with QRP, and the experience of others that has been relayed to me, indicates that 5 Watts is more than enough power for there to be plentiful and satisfying communication when a band is reasonably open. A good test for this is to scan a band, and spot every signal which is S9 + 25 dB. At 5 Watt QRP power levels, these would all still be S9, even if the original signal were 1500 Watts. I contend that the number of available communications partners at any given time, with 5 Watts and General frequency/mode privileges, greatly exceeds the number available with 100 Watts and limited frequency/mode privileges. To sum it all up, there are currently under discussion two methods for differentiating between intro class licensees and General class licensees. These two methods are power limitation, and frequency/mode limitation. So, we get the following decision matrix. Intro License Decision Matrix Limited Frequencies/Modes Broad Frequencies/Modes QRP Power If the old Novice didn’t work, then a fortiori this won’t either The present proposal Full Power (ie., 100 Watts) Didn’t work when we had the Novice license Indistinguishable from the General class license, and would be rightly considered as “dumbing down” the hobby. If the QRP power limitation is not acceptable, and heavy frequency/mode limitations are not effective (as we learned from the old Novice license) then we need to find another meaningful differentiator. Alternatively, we could abandon the intro license concept. Thanks for sending me the results of your Dakota Division survey. A cursory reading of it suggests that a low power, broad frequency/mode privilege license isn’t what your members are thinking. On the deeper reflection, the power question and the frequency/mode question weren’t linked. If the choices were presented as in the matrix above, I imagine the result would be different, though I won’t presume to guess what it would be. In any case, this may be a situation in which the Board needs to take a strong leadership and educational role. So far I’ve presented the idea to perhaps 50 people. Some have liked it. Some have expressed reservations but have listened to my arguments. None have condemned it. This tells me that there is general acceptance of the intro class license concept, there is no deep seated antipathy to the low power/broad privileges concept, and that further dialogue and explaination would be fruitful. So where should we go with this? 73, Mike K1TWF ------------------------ Here is the Communicator Class proposal in its latest form, for reference: 1. 5 watts power limit (unless otherwise restricted to a lower value). 2. All General frequencies and modes, except for 10 MHz, 60 meters, and 219-220 MHz (ie., places where there are special restrictions or rules of one sort or another) 3. Existing novices, techs, and tech pluses get these privileges in addition to whatever they currently have. 4. Very distinctive callsign which may not be used as the callsign when operating with anything other than communicator privileges. Perhaps N 2x3's (eg. Nx1xyz), or even 2x4's (Nx1wzyz). 5. Upon upgrading, an operator must get a new call, but could keep the old call along with the new one. However, the distinctive callsign could ONLY be used subject to the privileges of the communicator class. This could get to be something of a cult thing with the QRP crowd. It also makes it easier to police the power level restriction. 6. no vanity calls 7. A simple written exam of perhaps 25 questions, concentrating on operating practice, essential rules, and only very basic technical matters. No RF safety, no propagation, no esoteric stuff, no CW test (although there might be a word question about it on the written exam).