Was Incentive Licensing intended to force the use of SSB?

[k4kyv]

From a commentary by K3UD:

It is my opinion that the main reason for incentive licensing was a means to right the perceived wrongs of 1953 and force the use of SSB. The latter being accomplished by forcing Generals into very crowded band segments where the only alternatives were to either give up AM and switch to SSB in order to have a fighting chance at a Friday night QSO or upgrade and use the relatively QRM free bands of the Advanced and Extra classes.

Whether or not that was the intent, it worked out that way.  Within a year or so after Incentive Licensing was implemented, AM almost disappeared from HF. Thanks to a few hardy souls who insisted on sticking with the mode, it didn't disappear entirely, and this facilitated the "comeback" of AM which began to happen within another 5 years.

http://www.qrz.com/ib-bin/ikonboard.cgi?act=ST&f=3&t=109833

[Joe Long]

Art Collins never went broke pushing this junk.I always wonder what Curtis Le May got in return. JOE

[Bacon, WA3WDR]

I upgraded in 1967, and although the FCC was very slow to send me my new license, they eventually did, and I got it before the new rules went into effect in late 1968.  With 450 watts of heavily plate-modulated AM, and a dipole at 40 feet, I had no problem working 75 meters.

I went off the air around 1971 because I was just starting out pretty much on the wrong foot in life, my equipment was failing due to age and being stored in wet basements, I didn't have time or money to keep it working, and I wasn't living in places where I could really get much of an antenna up.  I think a lot of the young hams went through a similar situation - college was pretty consuming, and then starting out in life was tricky, not to mention wives and kids... Middle aged hams often dropped out of active radio because of job and family demands, and retirees bought sideband gear, and off they went.  Two meter FM and repeaters also got interesting, and then packet was the rage.  There were a lot of reasons for the dropoff of AM.

Most hams wanted to use sideband on HF, and the early sideband rigs produced pretty bad AM.  Hams traded their AM stuff for sideband stuff that really stunk on AM, so sideband became all they used.  Newer sideband equipment tends to have much better AM now, but still the AM output power is nowhere near the output you can get on SSB.  And a lot of radios have crummy receive audio that really kills the joy of AM.

Sideband is great - it's just not the fun AM we know and love.  I can see why most hams aren't interested in AM, and I can definitely see why the military went sideband back in the 50s, before going digital in more recent years (assuming they can get the scarce batteries for their stuff, so they don't have to use unencrypted FM with Family Radios to communicate).

[k4kyv]

The stated reasons for the ARRL making and supporting incentive
licensing proposals was related to the perceived decline in the number of amateurs who actually used CW on a regular basis, the increase in poor operating habits, declining courtesy on the bands, and lack of ongoing technical development among amateurs as a whole. This last reason actually boiled down to the noticeable decline in amateurs who did not (sic) homebrew much gear.

I assume he means the decline in the number of amateurs who homebrewed gear, or the increase in the number of amateurs whe did not homebrew much gear.

With the decline of AM and the rapid adoption of SSB, if anything, Incentive Licensing was the death knell of the art of homebrewing, as appliance operating became mainstream.

From this perspective, Incentive Licensing was a dismal failure in terms of its stated goal.

[w1guh]

I'm not sure that there was anything necessary to force, or even encourage, SSB.  In the days of crowded fone bands the lure of narrower signals and much more communications effectiveness, watt for watt, the technical merits were compelling.  A pw SSB signal could get through where a pw AM signal was completely buried.

When I got on SSB I kept my AM rig (Eico 720 & a pair of 6AQ5's, Knight-kit V44 VFO) with the intent of staying on AM.  But here's the funny part of that.  Even with that radio sitting on the bench, I tried and tried (without success) to put the HX-20 on AM.  Accomplished nothing beyond learning that a linear amplifier doesn't take plate modulation!

I can think of no reason why I didn't just fire up the Eico instead of wasting the time doing what I did 

[W9LBB]

Howdy, Gang!


>snip!<

Art Collins never went broke pushing this junk.I always wonder what Curtis Le May got in return. JOE

>snip!<



"Strangelove" Le May was on watch when SSB took over (I can still remember the "Sky King" messages going out in AM on 15,016 KHz), but he wasn't the biggest booster of SSB for the Strategic Air Command.

I remember an article in one of the magazines in the late '50s or early '60s about a SAC general who also happened to be a ham, name of "Butch" Griswald (I don't remember his callsign). The guy was apparently heavily into SSB on the ham bands.

He supposedly talked Le May into allowing an experiment. He installed his own barefoot KWM-1 aboard a C-97 transport (to which they'd added an extra wire antenna and matchbox), and installed a KWM-2 at SAC headquarters in Omaha. The C-97 then took off on a 'round the world training flight, maintaining communications with Omaha on 15 and 20 meters all the way...   in addition to rag chewing with hams the whole time.

Supposedly, the test was so successful that Le May started the transition to SSB for SAC...   tho more likely the whole stunt was more a matter of PR to pressure Congress for the funding to do it.

It seemed like SAC was heavily into public relations stunts like this under Kurt Le May. There was another one that they did with Hewlett Packard. When HP was beginning to market thier newly developed caesium beam frequency standard they carefully calibrated one and rigged it to operate on batteries. Under battery power they took it from the HP plant to an air base, and loaded it aboard a KC-135 jet tanker. There, it was connected into the aircraft's internal power supply. The frequency standard was then taken around the world at 600 knots or so, and then brought back to the HP plant. At the plant there was another, identical standard that had been carefully synchronized to the one that went for a ride. Supposedly, any time difference between the two standards was proof of the validity of Einstein's Theory of Relativity!

HP and SAC had a public relations field day with this one!


73's,

Tom, W9LBB

[wa2zdy]

Lemay too became an adherent to SSB for his hamming.  Most accounts I've read show Lemay as the driving force, but I'm sure Griswald wasn't sitting idly either. 

While AM is fine sounding and you guys keep the old stuff running, a fun time if you ask me, SSB really was better for the basic communications SAC needed.  The technological factors cannot be denied.

Now back to CW for me . . .

[k4kyv]

"Strangelove" Le May was on watch when SSB took over (I can still remember the "Sky King" messages going out in AM on 15,016 KHz), but he wasn't the biggest booster of SSB for the Strategic Air Command.

I remember hearing on AM, "Sky King, Sky King, this is (foget the name).  Do not answer, do not answer.  Break break."

Does anyone know who was sending those messages and what was the purpose of the transmissions?

[w3jn]

Those were USAF transmissions supposedly to the LOOKING GLASS mission (the Boeing 707 and later 747 that was up 24/7 for command/control nuclear survivability).