I personally wish they'd bring back the CW testing. The day they eliminated it was the day ham radio went over the top of the hill and began it's steady slide down toward the pits.
I think ham radio started going downhill:
- the day governments began regulating the use of radio, thus denying us the entertaining aspects of chaos
- the day spark was made illegal
- the day the average age of amateur radio operators exceeded the age at which people tend to start sentences with the phrase "The problem with kids these days..."
- the decision to create the Novice license
- the decision to no longer grant new Novice licenses
- incentive licensing, which ground prospective hams under the bootheel of excessive expectations
- an open question pool, which removed the all-too-necessary bootheel
- the rise of CB in the 1970s, which deprived ham radio of new blood
- the subsequent decline of CB, which forced many CBers to become hams and work 75-meter phone
- the invention of FT8 by Joe Taylor, allowing hams to make contacts despite poor propagation, but in an impersonal way that doesn't have the warmth and personal touch that comes with repeatedly telling CW contacts that it's 65 degrees and drizzly in Topeka
- the general lack of desire to build equipment, news of which apparently hasn't reached the ever-increasing number of companies selling kits and parts
It's amazing that there are any of us left.