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April 14th 05, 04:56 AM

From: on Wed,Apr 13 2005 4:28 am

Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:

wrote:
From: N2EY on Apr 12, 4:20 pm

wrote:

most skipped for brevity...

I simply don't want to read Len's story about ADA again. He's posted
it
here so many times I can recite it from memory. But
he never explains why it has any bearing on amateur radio policy
today.

I've already explained the "bearing it has" years ago.
Let's take it again, from the top...

Back in the beginning of the 1950s, the U.S. military
was NOT using any morse code modes for long-distance
point-to-point communications. Most of that message
"traffic" was written teleprinter that carried the
vast majority of military communications.

NO morse code modes were used on such radio circuits
afterwards. That SHOULD have some meaning to rational
persons insofar as the efficacy of morse code for
communications...in short, morse code was way too slow,
too prone to human errors by its operators, and
generally so inefficient that, by now, EVERY other
radio service has either DROPPED the mode (if they used
it at all in the past) or NEVER CONSIDERED it when that
radio service began. The sole exception is AMATEUR
radio...a hobby pursuit, a recreation, something done
on free time for enjoyment.

For over half a century (actually, since before WW2)
the brunt of messaging in the military has been done
by modes OTHER than morse code. An approximation of
the amount of such military traffic is a minimum of
1 1/2 MILLION messages a MONTH back in 1955. It was
not trivial, it wasn't confined to a few ship's radio
rooms. It was the logistical supply "glue" that
enabled the United States military to support itself
worldwide. It was necessary to keep "getting the
messages through" as the old, and still current,
Signal Corps phrase puts it.

It should be obvious to rational people that there is
NO need for any morse code testing for a hobby radio
activity. It is NOT a "national service." It is NOT
needed to "maintain a reserve of 'skilled' radio
operators" for the nation or even a locality.

What morse code testing for a hobby radio activity
has become is a travesty, a gross artificiality kept
in there by old-timers who managed to pass such tests
and keep insisting that all newcomers MUST do as they
did. There is NO rational reason for that. There is
only the artificiality of some hazing exercise so
that those who pass can adopt the artificiality of
doing something that few can. Nonsense.

I don't want to read it again.

Naturally, since you are one of those old-timers who
thinks of little else but morse code operation on
the HF amateur bands. You want to enforce your own
private desires and accomplishment goals on others
regardless of their wishes or the irrationality of your
demands.

You don't want to read it because someone else was
able to be in a position to do REAL HF communications
all the time. That's way above the average amateur
experience. You resent knowing that another has done
it. But...you are going to have to live with it.

"It ain't braggin if ya done it..." I did it.