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License Class Structure, NOT Class Structure!

Note: In this article I am referencing tech and extra class licensed hams.  By no means am I saying that ALL of one or the other are a certain way.  I know many techs and extras that break the mold both for the good and for the bad.  But to prevent things from being confusing by always conditionalizing each sentence, I am conditionalizing the article here.

Ham/Amateur Radio is a great hobby to have.  It is full of fun things to get into.  From Morse code to Amateur Television and Packet Radio to Moon bouncing.  There is voice communications, AMTOR, Baudot, Satellite communications, and more.  Then there are all the great activities we participate in like Hamfests, Public Service, Public Education, Emergency Communications, and passing Health and Wellness messages into and out of damaged areas.  

We are the last line of communications for the emergency services when all of there plans always seem to fail.  We all come together in the ham radio community to have fun and serve the public, to create new technology and save lives.  But in the midst of all this great stuff we have something that is wrong.  There seems to be a biest against Technician Class Licensed hams by Extra Class Licensed hams.  

I have talked with numerous Techs and they have all encountered the same problem.  Extras treat techs like lower class members.  

I just recently had yet another bad experience with an extra class.  They were selling something that I was interested in, but when I asked if they could help me by simply letting me break the cost over a couple of paychecks they were very rude to me.  I didn't even know they were an extra at the time, but as soon as I got the response back I knew they had to be an extra.  I checked there call sign in qrz and sure enough I was right.  

Another time I signed up to be a net control station during a hurricane but was never called even though they kept calling for volunteers.  Why didn't they use me when they were calling for hams?  Simple, it was an extra class calling for general and extra class licensed hams to fill a seat.  Did they do a lot of HF work? No.  They hardly did any at all, but VHF was running all the time.  

Now there are 2 separate VHF stations setup to handle traffic and HF is just backup for the most part.  Turning down help during an emergency just because they can't work an HF radio that is going to sit there quite anyway is not just wrong, its criminal.  People lives are at risk, but someone's bigotries is in the way.

It seems that extra class licensed hams think that technicians are a harm to the hobby.  They figure that the quality of operators is regulated by the amount of work they have to do become hams.  They would sooner see the hobby disappear than to lower the requirements to be a ham in order to increase the number of hams.  It's the old Quantity vs. Quality argument.  But what I see is a bunch of older aged hams with extra class licenses sitting around working HF and sneering at everyone else.  

Then I see the techs exploring every segment of the hobby.  I see techs being active in emergency communications and Public Service.  I see techs exemplifying what I feel is the epitome of ham radio.  And I just see those extras sitting around sneering.  

If extras want to make sure the hobby isn't "brought down to the lowest common denominator like CB was" then they need to stick there sneering in park, get there buts off the chair, cut off the HF rig and find at least one tech that they can take under there wing and teach.  The world is filled with far too many armchair quarterbacks as it is.  They also need to learn that HF isn't the top rung of amateur radio.  

VHF/UHF communications have been developed to a level where they can just as much as HF and more.  It used to be that to get around the world you have to use HF.  Not anymore.  You can use your mobile rig to bounce off satellites or EME to contact stations anywhere from within this country to within this hemisphere.  You can use a 1 watt radio to communicate with people across the state, and even multiple states.  You have the ability to communicate more effectively by using digital modes over a fairly large area.

Many people pull out there bible of HF and preach about how important it is for wide spread emergencies.  Yet I have seen hurricane after hurricane come in and HF get very little use because the VHF systems are so established that they are more reliable for state wide coverage.  More and more repeaters are setting up where there is emergency power and setting up linking systems.  This provides more backup systems for emergency conditions than ever before.  

Before long we will probably have satellite repeater networks letting a ham with a mobile radio talk to anywhere on the planet.  And HF can't even use satellite communications because the nature of HF prevents the signal from getting out of the atmosphere in anything even close to an efficient manner.

But I still know that HF communications are important to have around because of there independent nature.  I know that HF lets you experiment with fun and interesting things like propagation.  There is something about having to use communications that "don't" guarantee you solid communications.  Systems where you have to tinker around and try different things to get it to work.  I love things like that too.  But extras seem to feel that because of there license class, they are part of a "Class System" and that extra class is the same thing as upper class.  It isn't.

I hereby issue a challenge to ALL extra class licensees to find one tech class licensee and help them to explore everything they are interested in.  If you want to try and show them how great HF is as well, go for it.  But just stop sitting there getting a tan off some vacuum tubes, clicking a little thing that looks like a stapler feeling that you are too good for that and sneering down at "all these techs that are bringing down the hobby."