Back in the late 1960s, they called it Incentive licensing.  It was to 
encourage hams to upgrade from general class to Advanced or Extra.  Going to 
Advanced gave you back what you lost as a general but eventually, additional 
band space was given to extras and advanced operators.  It bummed me out big 
time because the bottom 25 KHz was where I hung out a majority of my CW 
time.  I didn't care much about what they did with the phone bands but 
eventually, I gave up and studied to take my advanced.  A year or so later I 
passed the Extra.  Now I like that extra phone band space, for what it's 
worth, but it was the CW frequencies I craved.  Now, if you don't have the 
extra class, you've got to keep a list of all the frequencies and where you 
can, and cannot, operate.  Speaking of which, when I first got on 15 meters, 
I had full privileges.  I tuned around the phone band one day with my Drake 
TR4 and heard, for the first time in my life, a VE7 calling CQ.  I jumped on 
him and prayed he'd hear my 40 meter dipole I was using on 15 meters.  He 
did and he replied and we talked for 20 minutes.  After we signed, I was 
entering things into my Braille log book so I remained on frequency.  Almost 
immediately after we signed, a friend of the VE7, somewhere else in Canada, 
called his friend I just signed with and they began talking.  The new guy 
said, hey Joe, did you realize you guys are 20 KHz below the American phone 
band?  It didn't take me long to make sure I knew where I could go and not 
go.  Now it sounds like they are considering cutting some band area for more 
digital frequencies to be able to spread out.  Shoot, I already often hear 
RTTY as low as 7032 on 40 meters.  Half the 30 meter band is already digital 
transmissions, too.  I've thought for years the CW bands were going to be 
hacked down to 50 or 75 KHz in width so we will see what happens.

Phil.
K0NX


Phil.
Living His Name
WWW.SafePlaceFellowship.COM