Entropy, Merit Badges, and the Amateur Extra Who Couldn’t Find the Fuse

Don’t stop me, I’m on a roll! My earlier posts analyzed and satirized entropy in the microcosm of amateur radio nets and the organizations that run those nets. Now, I broaden my view to consider entropy in the larger amateur radio community as a whole. Buckle your operating chair seat belts, mateys, we’re in for a rough ride!

The Arguments and the Reality

Every few years, amateur radio rediscovers one of its favorite parlor games: arguing about whether that change finally killed the hobby. Incentive licensing. No-code licenses. Digital modes. Remote operation. Pick your poison. Pour coffee. Assume the position.

This time, though, my attention has drifted away from the great code kerfuffle and toward a question more interestingly intrinsic—and frankly, more uncomfortable: What the hell do our licenses actually mean anymore?

I’ll stipulate a few things up front to avoid the blood pressure spike. Code still matters technically. CW remains unmatched for weak-signal work, and anyone who says otherwise is arguing with physics and human neurophysiology, not me. At the same time, the FCC’s elimination of the code requirement back in 2007 did not trigger an extinction event. Eighteen-plus years later, the bands are still there, the repeaters still work, and the sky has not fallen—although some folks have been yelling “incoming” ever since.

But focusing on code misses the larger point. The deeper issue is not what was removed from the licensing process, but what replaced it. And the short answers is: not much.

Testing Competence vs. Memory

When I earned my General in 1960, the written exam was not something you “studied for” in the modern sense. You prepared because you had to understand. Drawing schematics was not a novelty; it was the expectation. The Extra Class exam—back when it required 20 WPM CW—was a capstone, not a participation trophy. You didn’t stumble into it. You climbed.

Fast forward to today. The current Amateur Extra exam is a 50-question multiple-choice exercise drawn from a published question pool. As a Volunteer Examiner, I’ve had examinees cheerfully explain their strategy: “If you can’t handle the math, just skip that part and memorize the rest.” And they’re right. The system permits it. The exam rewards recognition, not reasoning.

The predictable outcome? Extras who hold the credential but not the conceptual framework that credential once implied. Two weeks after retrieving their license, they would be hard pressed to even repeat the answers they got right, let alone the concepts underlying them.

Extra Class Pedestrians

Friends and fellow hams, I am not making this up. I know one Extra who asked whether the number printed on the top of an ATC fuse referred to volts or amps. Another chronic loudmouth pontificated that to compare signal strengths expressed in decibels, we should divide rather than subtract. These are not trick questions. These are fundamental misunderstandings. Yet both individuals hold the highest amateur license the FCC issues.

If this were an isolated anecdote, I’d shrug and move on. It isn’t. What we are seeing is credential entropy: the gradual decoupling of a license from the knowledge, skills, and judgment it was once assumed to represent. The piece of paper stays the same. The informational density behind it thins.

Go to social media ham radio groups (if you are a masochist) and you’ll find them replete with inane questions from hams with two-letter call signs. The responses from their peers are even sillier, ranging from misleading old wives’ tales to frankly incorrect solutions, peppered with a few quiet (because they’re bound to be shouted down by pseudo-experts) correct answers. And then, there’s the classic response: RTFM (read the f*cking manual), typically uttered by those who never read it themselves.

“I’ve Got a First-Class Commercial Radiotelegraph Certificate!”

Interestingly, some hams react to this decline in signaling value by chasing harder credentials. I know several who pursued FCC commercial Radiotelegraph or Radiotelephone licenses long after any employer cared. Some did it for work, and they are very quiet about it. Others did it for differentiation—to prove, mostly to themselves, that they still clear a high bar in a hobby where the bars have been steadily lowered.

That split is telling. When a system no longer creates meaningful gradients internally, people import them from elsewhere. Contest scores. DXCC tallies. Club operating awards. Commercial tickets. Anything that says, “I didn’t just show up; I learned something.”

Are We Doomed to Extinction?

None of this means amateur radio is doomed. But it does mean it is no longer self-ordering. Rigor has become optional. Mastery is elective. And credentials—once a rough proxy for competence—now function more like merit badges. Nice to have. Reassuring. Occasionally decorative.

Before anyone fires up the email cannon, let me be clear: I am not advocating reinstating code exams, nor am I proposing a licensing Hunger Games where only the strong survive. Accessibility has value and growth matters, but so does meaning. When the highest credential in a technical service no longer reliably signals technical literacy, something important has been lost—even if it was lost politely.

So yes, this sounds like negativism. Or doomsaying, if you will. Or the grumbling of an old fart with too many memories and not enough patience. Fair enough. But if amateur radio wants to remain more than appliance operation with nostalgia sprinkled on top, it needs to ask an uncomfortable question: Are our licenses certifying achievement—or merely recording attendance?

I’ll leave that there. If nothing else, it should make for livelier debate than the usual “ham radio died when they eliminated code” reruns. And if it doesn’t, well… entropy always wins eventually.