Scott,
Why did I upgrade? Well, part of it was that incentive licensing took away
some of the frequencies I could operate on, and part of it was that my
friend had gotten an Advanced, and I still had my General (actually,
Conditional license to be technically correct.) So, part of it was I wanted
to keep up.
Does it make that much of a difference? I guess that invariably comes back
partially to frequency privileges. And, at the time I did it, there were
more 1X2 callsigns available. And, I think having the privilege of a 1x2
call does make a difference, particularly if you try getting through a DX
pile-up or work much contesting. I know my call is a helluva lot easier
than my old one, W A 8 V A A, to many Ay sound, lol.
Whether it is worth it to you depends a lot on what activity you do. If you
like CW, you get the bottom 25KHz on all the bands. There seems to be a
fair amount of activity there. If you like working DX, there are some parts
of the Advanced/Extra porttion of the upper HF bands that are less
congested.
If you're primarily interested in general ragchewing or traffic-handling, or
if you are mainly interested in Vhf/Uhf, and you don't have a desire just to
learn the additional stuff, then don't go through the bother of learning it
to pass an exam. Almost all the traffic handling nets are in the General
portion of the bands, so you don't need the added band privileges for that.
Steve, K8SP
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