Dee Flint wrote:
"Alun L. Palmer" wrote in message
.. .
wrote in
oups.com:
[snip]
It's the classic case of a red herring diversion. Blame the code
test
for everyhting bad while the real problems are not addressed.
73 de Jim, N2EY
It depends what you mean. Will repealing the code test
provide a vast
increase in numbers? No. Will it provide some increase? Yes.
I'd say that's more like a maybe rather than a yes.
Good point!
Are there
thousands of hams that could pass the General or Extra theory
trapped above
30 MHz? Yes.
There are no hams "trapped above 30Mhz.
Agreed.
Consider how many Novices and Techs who have passed Element 1 have not
upgraded, even after almost 5 years. Are they "trapped"
because of the General written test?
Will there be a large increase in HF use? Yes.
That is also a maybe. If the code is dropped this year,
many will buy the
rigs and try it but may be sadly disappointed in the results
since we are in
the trough of the sunspot cycle and results are so often poor
right now.
Depends on what people expect.
If someone expects to put up a ground-mounted "all band" vertical,
connect a 100 W transceiver and make SSB DXCC in
a few weeks without much effort, they'll probably be
sadly disappointed.
OTOH, 80 meter CW has been great the past couple of weeks. Good QSOs of
a couple hundred miles with modest stations at both ends.
All depends what you expect.
They may not stick with it until conditions improve since
they won't have
the skills to participate in the second most used mode
of shortwave communications.
Second most used by hams, anyway.
But I wonder if it would even get that far. The license
is only the first step - getting a station together and
working is a much bigger task than passing Element 1.
73 de Jim, N2EY