Fall 2003 Issue

FM

Questioning the Pool

 By Gary Pearce,* KN4AQ

Besides being the “all-knowing FM guru,” I teach ham classes in my spare time. Twice a year I “bone up” on the question pool so I can prepare to guide eager students through the arcane matters that we hams cherish, or at least believe others must suffer through as we did, to obtain the rite of passage leading to the coveted FCC license. Each time I come across a few questions or answers that I don’t like. Some are debatable, some cling to outdated dogma, while some, I think, are just plain wrong. After the class I get busy, however, and I don’t think about the questions or the answers until they pop up again at the next class. This year, though, they became column fodder.

I’ll restrict my question-pool comments to FM/repeaters, my supposed area of expertise. Eleven repeater-related questions set off my alarm as I was preparing to teach the new pool to the Technician license class. I’ll put them in three categories:
• Serious Errors
• Dogma
• Difference of Opinion

This isn’t target practice. I ran this column by Scott Neustadter, W4WW, the chairman of the Question Pool Committee, part of the National Conference of Volunteer Examiner Coordinators—the guys who write the questions. Scotty returned comments on most of them, and for the most part, he sticks to his guns. Now and then he allowed that I just might have an idea worthy of follow-up. I’ll give Scotty the last word on each question. Then I’ll include his review of how the committee comes up with the pool, and how you can participate. The questionable questions below come from the new Tech pool released last spring.

Dive in; the water’s fine!

Serious Errors (2 Questions)
T4C06 (A): What is the proper way to interrupt a repeater conversation to signal a distress call?
A. Say “BREAK” once, then your call sign
B. Say “HELP” as many times as it takes to get someone
to answer
C. Say “SOS,” then your call sign
D. Say “EMERGENCY” three times.

This question could be in all three categories: serious error, dogma, and difference of opinion. I’ll call it serious, and I will deal with it first because the “correct” answer could be life-threateningly wrong.

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