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I agree with your comment about amateur radio. When I go my first amateur ticket in 1976, I had to drive to Dallas and set before a FCC examiner. You had to do that in a field office back then. I did that twice before they put the examining in the hands of ham volunteers.

When I got my first license there was still a fair amount of home brew equipment. I still have some of that.

Now, the equipment (except some large final amplifiers are factory built equipment and the operators seldom do any of their repairs (which are far less frequent).

I hold a commercial radio license. Back then all stations were required to have at least one employee who was licensed for that. Now it is simply the responsibility of the station owner to insure that the station meets commercial standards. Again the commercial equipment is all type accepted factory equipment.

In the beginning of the FCC it was at the point where “spark” transmission was going away because of interference issues. I actually saw a spark transmitter that a very old amateur operator owned. Rotary type.

Now “sciences” like atmospheric science and AGW nonsense have morphed into political scams. Trump is very smart to put that crap out of it's misery.

The allocation of RF spectrum is an international issue. I don't expect that to go away. The policing issues that are political, not technical, can certainly be handled outside the current FCC’s functions.

Totally rethinking the entire Federal Department structure is the ideal way to eliminate the internal subversion of the nation. Close the Departments and reorganize them (much smaller), that is the way to get around firing a lot of individual people. Let them find new jobs like everyone else.

(I first got my ticket back in 1974, so I appreciate your recollection)

As an amateur operator, I am concerned with frequency allocation and likely unintentional interference. CF and LED lights, poorly designed switching power supplies, Internet over power lines, harmonics from BC stations, cracked power line insulators, faulty power line transformers, etc., etc., etc. cause interference in portions of the spectrum where an emitter is not licensed and really raise havoc.

(For those who aren’t amateur operators, consider this: have you ever gone through a part of your town where you simply CAN’T pick up your favorite AM radio because of all the noise? Chances are, interference from one of the above sources are messing with a part of the spectrum that is “owned” by the station you want to listen to...it’s a lot worse for amateur operators because the signals we try to receive are generally a lot lower than your favorite AM station)

There needs to be some sort of enforcement of that very technical issue. Not saying that it needs to be the FCC (could be NTIA for example or a technical services division within DOJ), but it is definitely needed.

(Again, for those who aren’t amateur operators, chances are you would want to have some sort of legal recourse to keep squatters off of your land or to investigate somebody who repeatedly dumps bags and bags of their garbage on your front yard. This is no different)