[MandieD]

Amateur radio, for better and worse, is self-policing, and passing the license exams is, among other things, declaring to your country’s communications regulator that you fully understand their rules for the use of certain parts of the spectrum, and in exchange, are allowed to use a lot more power than it would otherwise be a good idea to let non-EEs mess with. In the US, the entry-level exam can be passed by either remembering some of high school physics and carefully reading Section 97 of the FCC rules, or cramming a few hundred questions - hardly elite-level. Germany’s exams are harder and more of a logistical hassle, with the UK’s somewhere in between - I’ve not had any reason to see what the situation is like for anywhere else.

If the current amateur radio rules were done away with, I’m pretty sure whatever replaced them would be far more restrictive. The licensing rules have been changed a lot in most countries over the past 20 years - you no longer have to learn Morse Code.

Perhaps campaign for further revisions to your country’s licensing scheme if you find the current requirements to be irrelevant to safe, cooperative use of a limited bit of spectrum. Personally, I think it’s stupid that the most popular amateur frequencies are off-limits to German intermediate license holders, rather than just restricting their power levels (a valid safety concern). The UK gets this about right, from what I’ve seen.

Part of why amateur operators react so strongly when they hear, “I’m fixing to do something ill-advised with RF” is that we’re afraid of more legal restrictions being placed on us (and anyone else who bothers to pass an easy physics and rules test). Another part is that a lot of us don’t want you to get in trouble for something you might not have known was wrong (it’s a hobby that has long attracted introverted nerds, so the delivery sometimes leaves something to be desired). Your colleague freaked out at you, but he didn’t call the FCC-equivalent down on you.