K0NR recently launched a conversation on his blog about amateur radio licensing in the United States. Bob teaches license classes and he has some ideas about possible tweaks to that structure. I have never taught a license class and consider myself uniquely unqualified to jump into his conversation directly even though I have held every amateur radio license available to me through the ages. Novice, Technician, General, Advanced, and Extra class.

Still, I’m no expert on where the future of ham licensing should go. I don’t disagree with his overall sentiment that the current system of dragging newbies through the desolate land of FM repeaters has become misguided. That hasn’t always been the case. When I was a Novice I was perfectly happy with the HF spectrum that enabled for me using a morse code key. Once I joined a local club, however, I had an immediate teenage desire for a sexy handheld to clip on my belt. That was during the 1970’s when 2 meter FM repeater traffic was ubiquitous.

Fast-forward fifty years and I admit I haven’t used a repeater in at least a decade and I consider dumping the newly licensed onto that strange land more of a punishment than a reward. Just my opinion, sue me if you must.

The problem, assuming there is one, is that the amateur service has been condensed into just three classes, and incentive licensing remains firmly attached to them. New converts can begin at the “bottom” so to speak, with less strenuous testing, and work their way to all privileges with tougher exams. Having not taken a license exam in decades I really can’t say how tough the testing is, but I’m given to believe it remains more difficult to pass the Extra than the Technician test?

Weirdly enough, though the Technician class license today is considered “entry-level”, it conveys the most complex of all privileges. After all, a Technician license offers access to microwaves and EME, the highest technical achievement an amateur radio enthusiast can attain. It makes me wonder who were those featherheads who concluded long ago that tossing a wire over a tree limb and tapping out Morse code on 40 meters required a more rigorous license test?

But that’s the way the whole thing evolved, flaws and all, and something about it just ain’t right in 2026. Bob’s ideas about making a few fundamental tweaks certainly seem like a good idea, though in this regard I offer a word of caution. These will be unheeded and discarded and my own belief system about such things will be challenged, likely even called “crazy”. And that’s okay with me. I always tend to run the opposite direction from the crowd.

What you must consider is that some of the ideas surfaced in that conversation about improving the currently broken licensing structure are based on FT8. There are those who believe its current runaway popularity should be used to make ham radio more interesting to the unwashed masses. Craft a new beginners license that permits newbies to get on HF and use FT8 and ham radio will be filled to standing room only status, so that thinking goes.

I disagree since I still believe FT8 to be a passing fad. I can’t deny its current popularity or the wild-eyed acceptance of ham radio’s “crack”, I simply believe at some point radio enthusiasts will see it for what it is, a vapid exercise in futility and there will be a yearning to return to ham radio as a more social exercise than simply contact collection. I realize there are powerful forces at work to maintain the status quo, but the Universe has been firing off strong signals that change is afoot.

People are growing weary of too much tech. Digital detox is trending in the non-radio world though it hasn’t entered the ham radio lexicon just yet. Hams are always at least a half decade behind the muggle world. But it’s happening. The human rejection of data centers, AI technology, and social media are just the tip of a newly emerging spear.

I sense a major change in the works that will attempt to return humanity to humans and this won’t be good for specific modes like FT8. This will eventually be realized by even the most tech-absorbed radio hams and so it seems inadvisable that we would create a new license class based solely or even partly on HF FT8 privileges. How often you use PSK31 today is how often you will use FT8 in the not too distant future.

Recalling the folly of a repeater class license, we should tread carefully with any FT8 specific type license creation as the primary hook. Things change with frightening pace in this Second Century of amateur radio.