What's in a name?

Foundations of Amateur Radio

For a long time I've struggled with the way we differentiate between the different license classes in Amateur Radio. In Australia, the three levels of license are Foundation, Standard and Advanced. In the United States, they're called the Technician, General and Extra. In the United Kingdom they're called Foundation, Intermediate and Full.

These naming conventions convey that more and more is gained as you progress though the ranks, but they also convey that you are incomplete if you're not at the top of the food chain with an Advanced, Extra or Full license.

This naming convention is not universal. The license classes in the Netherlands are called the N or Novice Class and F Class, but generally they're referred to as the N and F classes and in Germany they're called Class A and Class E.

Of course if you're making a complaint about what something is called then coming up with a new name is one of the first things that you'll be asked and that has stopped me from even beginning to make this observation out loud, let alone spend some time talking about it.

Today I have a response to the question: "Well, if you don't like what it's called, what would YOU call it?"

Here's what I came up with, if we're staying with three license classes, the three names I'd adopt are Low Power, Medium Power and High Power. The names are chosen to distinguish the power levels associated with the license which then also allows for another radical idea.

What if everyone had the exact same privileges and the only difference between the licenses was how much power you could use?

This in turn would require a person who moves from one power level to the next to learn specific skills. For example, RF safety with Low Power is completely different from High Power. Antenna efficiency has a completely different impact on a high power radio, than it does on a low power radio.

Interacting with high voltages doesn't happen with low power but you can bet your RF burn that it happens with high power.

EMR, or Electro Magnetic Radiation issues were the single largest hindrance to introducing more than 400 Watts into Amateur Radio in Australia. What if getting a High Power License came with a built-in EMR module and that the energy was built-into the licence system?

If all licenses were the same, except for the power output, it would mean that all Amateurs could experiment with new modes and invent new things and the only hindrance to such experimentation would be the imagination of the person using the radio.

We have artificial boundaries between the various classes of license which bear no relation to reality. In my opinion the boundaries hinder the progress of an amateur and external factors such as the changing of the solar cycle impact different license classes in different ways depending on when they got their license.

Skills that are gained could be gathered as points or modules and could incrementally allow the progression to higher power.

Of course, 100 Watts on 160m does not have the same impact from an EMR perspective as 100 Watts on 10 GHz, but I'm not advocating that the Low Power license is limited to 10 Watts across all bands, nor am I saying that a Medium Power License should have 100 Watts on every band. But there's no reason that the power level cannot be proportional to the amount of energy involved, rather than a fixed power output at the transmitter.

For my money, lets ditch this Foundation, Standard and Advanced system and move to Low Power, Medium Power and High Power.

Who's with me?

I'm Onno VK6FLAB