In article , Robert Casey
writes:

At which age did you pass an amateur radio license exam, Leonard?

Never tried, snarly dave.

I passed my First Phone exam on the first try in Chicago at an FCC
field office in March 1956. Never looked back.

Then learning the 5 wpm and getting the extra should be a walk in the park
then.
It took me about a month to learn 5 wpm and I'm no good at such motor skills.

Gosh, olde-tymer, I've walked in many fine parks in my time but not
a single one of them required any morse code proficiency to walk.

Never saw any "Keep Off The Code Keys" signs either.

Birdies in the trees chirped "tweet, tweet," not "beep, beep."

You must have lived in different cities than I.

"Motor skills" I learned as a teenager, got my first drivers license
without having to test for morse code. In Illinois...obviously a
regressive state, right? :-)

Psycho-motor skill I learned in middle school (we called it
"junior high school" back then before educational PC) was typing
at tested maximum of 60 WPM. On typewriters that had no key
markings. :-)

None in the typing class had to copy any morse code. More's
the pity, right? I later cruised on 60 WPM Teletypes just dandy.

Now, let's concentrate on WHY there's still a morse code test for
an AMATEUR radio license...and WHY it must remain law forever
and ever. Or, at least until the last PCTA has their code key
forcibly removed from their cold, dead fingers.

Is morse code not so wonderful that the feds have to keep the
morse test in law so that cute little seven-year-olds can have
radio playmates? Or forty-seven-year-olds and older?

Ever wonder why morse code is the SECOND most used mode
on HF, a distant second behind voice? All the HF hams had to
test for code but so few continued to use it. I guess it must not be
so wonderful, so popular after all.

Morse code gets through when everything else will...

LHA / WMD