We are still waiting for the FCC to address the following issues;

[N0PQK]

Update

1. GMRS rule changes - Complete

2. New Amateur Service Band (135.7-137.8 KHz) - Complete

3. Action to remove the baud rate limit and to instead implement a bandwidth limitation - In progress

4. Implementation of the 472-479 KHz band - Complete

[W3WN]

6. The elimination of amateur radio licenses altogether. I mean they might as well. The licenses are pretty much give-aways now as it is.

Doesn't say very much about your ability does it? You were licensed in 1992 after they made licensing according to you "a giveaway". Being able to tap out something in CW is not a good indication of someone's knowledge of radio or electronics.

They couldn't do that and meet their international obligations under the Radio Regulations, although I will admit that in practice, that's what they appear to have done

* sigh *

[W3WN]

< snip >
Again it would be great if they didn't publish the answers.

And who is "they" exactly?

You would never get all of the publishers to agree to not publishing the Q&A.  Even if somehow you did, someone else would come along and publish them.

That horse escaped from the barn a long, long time ago.  The barn has since burned down, the horse has died, and yet some are still beating on it. 

[KG6AF]

< snip >
Again it would be great if they didn't publish the answers.

And who is "they" exactly?

You would never get all of the publishers to agree to not publishing the Q&A.  Even if somehow you did, someone else would come along and publish them.

That horse escaped from the barn a long, long time ago.  The barn has since burned down, the horse has died, and yet some are still beating on it. 

Agreed.

The "close the question pool" idea seems to come up regularly, without any regard to how practical it would be to implement.  Here are the facts:

1) The ARRL VEC alone has almost 30,000 VEs, not to mention W5YI and about a dozen other VECs.  How would you keep the answers secret among a group of people that large?

2) We can't close the pool by going back to an FCC-based examination system because the FCC has no money to do that.  None.  And there's no reason to believe they would get the money in the future.  And if by some miracle the FCC did reinstitute in-house amateur exams, there'd be a hue and cry from the amateur community when the number of test sites and sessions were reduced by a factor of, what, 100?

3) As W3WN pointed out, even if there were some way to close the pool and keep the examiners from leaking it, some enterprising ham would pull a Dick Bash and collect/publish questions and answers.

If you want to make the tests tougher, urge the NCVEC to make the question pools larger. Anything else is just pointless venting.

[AA4PB]

You could get a book with the questions in it at least back to the 1950's. All it takes is to interview a bunch of people who have taken the exam recently. Having the FCC administer the exam doesn't keep the questions from getting out. All of the questions on FCC rules are just memorization anyway - there is no other way to learn them. Even the old "draw a schematic of..." questions were basically memorization. When I started out I could draw a schematic of an ARC5 from memory but that certainly didn't mean that I had the knowledge to design one from scratch.

[W3TTT]

If you want to make the tests tougher, urge the NCVEC to make the question pools larger. Anything else is just pointless venting.

I urge that the Amateur Radio License tests remain as they are.  I have no issue with them. 

I suggest that some authority (ARRL perhaps?) develop a whole new set of tests.  These would be on a increasingly more difficult scale.  The tests would be on all facets of Ham Radio and Electronics.  Maybe computers too. 

I would go for that.  I mean, DXCC, WAS and such "awards" are nice.  But these awards don't show any advanced knowledge.  I would like some more distinguished awards for all Electronics subjects.

Even the "Extra" license exam was rather limited in it's usefulness.  You can get an Extra if you have a great memory.  But real electronics skill is a different animal. 

With awards for advanced knowledge and skill, then all this complaining about how simple the FCC exams are would go away, right? 

W3TTT

 

[K0UA]

Well, one thing we can all do is help newcomers with their technical difficulties, and make an attempt to help them gain new knowledge. Wouldn't that attitude be a lot more productive than complaining about the lack of technical prowess of our newcomers or the system of licensing? But pitching in and helping is something we can all do.

[KG6AF]

If you want to make the tests tougher, urge the NCVEC to make the question pools larger. Anything else is just pointless venting.

I urge that the Amateur Radio License tests remain as they are.  I have no issue with them. 
 

Nor do I, but clearly some people do.  I'm merely suggesting that there are other, more productive, ways to pursue that issue than by calling for a closed question pool.

[W9FIB]

Well, one thing we can all do is help newcomers with their technical difficulties, and make an attempt to help them gain new knowledge. Wouldn't that attitude be a lot more productive than complaining about the lack of technical prowess of our newcomers or the system of licensing? But pitching in and helping is something we can all do.

+1

[G3RZP]

It does seem to me that the exams these days cover a very wide range of topics and thus can't take any one topic too deeply. Many of them deal with facets of ham radio that just don't interest me, and I don't bother learning about them.