[BC] radio engineering not a profession

[Xmitters at aol.com]

Richard:

Licensing (I am assuming you're talking about the FCC First Class) has
nothing to do with "Engineering."  My First Phone says "Operator's 
License" and
elimination of _IT_ has nothing to do with engineering as a 
profession; Operator
Licensing merely placed the responsibility where it belongs; in the hands of
the station licensee.

When and where was Radio Engineering declared a non-profession?  I have a
very good reason for asking this, given that I have an EIT license 
from the state
of Illinois.
I have contacted the Department of Professional Regulation about taking the
PE exam.

I was never told by them that Radio Engineering is not a profession. What I
*was* told is that if the lion's share of my duties were that of 
repair and not
"creating" then what I'm doing is tech work and not engineering. I was also
told that any system or circuit that I designed would likely be considered as
Engineering if someone signed off on it. Because I have mostly worked at
one-man shops, there was not a Professional Engineer OR someone practicing
Professional Engineering  who was supervising my work, that 
experience would not count
regardless. So Radio Engineering, here in Illinois anyway, is not
automatically considered as nonprofessional.  YMMV. The particular 
situations like mine,
are decided by a panel of PE's that decide whether or not the candidate (in
this case, me) can take the PE exam or not.

The wording regarding supervision by "a PE or someone doing Professional
Engineering"  is there because the definition of Professional 
Engineering is not
cut and dried here in Illinois. That's one of the things that  the
certification panel decides.

I could possibly solve this problem by setting up a supervisory relationship
with one of my licensed professors that I studied under 1n 1995, and have him
sign off on all of my "engineering" decisions here at the station. That's no
Guarantee of course. Then what is "supervision?"

The chap at the State that I talked to, also threatened to bring me up on
charges if I made an issue out of my radio work as the "lone" 
engineer counting
towards my experience and a certification to test, because I was not 
supervised
by a PE or someone doing Professional Engineering, and "according to me" was
doing professional engineering. How's that for grade A B*** S***?!  To the
man's defense, I really don't think he was serious; he was just being an
argumentative smart ass. (that's not much of a defense is it? :-D )

Plus, if you're working as an employee, the employer can give you whatever
title it desires to give you; BUT, you just can't whore yourself out 
for hire to
design onsies and twosies of of a circuit for anyone that asks you to do so.
Contract broadcast "engineers" here in Illinois are safe, so long as they do
not deliberately claim that they are a Professional Engineer when they do not
have a PE license. That decision came down a few years ago, thanks to a law
suit with Novell, about their CNE program. I CNE can whore themselves 
out to the
public, but they're OK so long as they don't use that sacred term, "P.E." Same
goes for contract broadcast engineers.

Interesting contrast: About 30 miles from me is the famous DOE HEP lab,
Fermilab. Now if I worked over there replacing cooling hoses on water 
cooled power
tubes (and they have a lot of those over there), every minute I'm working
there counts as professional engineering because it is a government physics
research facility. I would not even have to be supervision by a P.E.; 
I would just
have to be supervised.

 > Now that licensing is not required and "radio engineering" is
 > no longer a recognized profession, safety at the transmitter
 > site may fall into the cracks. Most radio transmitters are
 > designed so that it takes multiple failures or downright
 > disabling of protective circuitry to expose a technician to
 > harmful voltages.
 >

Jeff Glass, BSEE CSRE
Chief Engineer  WNIU WNIJ
NPR Affiliate
Northern Illinois University