Dan/W4NTI wrote:
wrote in message
.. . . .

The number of JA amateur station licenses has been steadily declining
for about 10 years, even with their nocodetest 4th class HF license. It
will be interesting to see what happens to the number of JA hams with
these changes.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Perhaps they want the capability of being able to copy the Russian, Chinese,
and the N. Koreans.

Gee.....just like the old Eastern Block countries did.....they still have
the CW. Gee wonder why?

May I venture an opinion? Hows this? When the crap hits the fan and all
we have left is basic CW to communicate with....where are the ops coming
from?

From the kiddie chat rooms and RRAP of course . . . (?!)

In it's Evil Empire days in the eastern bloc it was their militaries
which very heavily encouraged and supported ham radio. They made no
bones about the fact that they viewed hams as a pool of reserve
military assets with critical skills. Hundreds if not thousands of
clubs were equipped with freebie military gear and near-mandatory
participation in contests was the norm since contesting is a
skill-builder. I remember listening to some of their "inhouse"
contests, SPs working UAs, etc. Those guys were *good*, almost 100%
hand-keyed 25-30 WPM CW hour after hour.

Maybe there's a grain of truth in your contention Dan, maybe some
countries still see some value in retaining some basic communications
skills in case push comes to shove . . . ?

Dan/W4NTI

w3rv