"John Smith" wrote

As I look at it, hams are all a bunch which want to destroy the hobby and
watch it die as freqs are stripped away and their numbers become too small to
be of interest to anyone, let alone the FCC... they would ONLY do this if they
wanted the hobby to die--but for some strange reason--wish to claim
otherwise!!! ... go figure...

-- THE LAST HAM --

It was a warm sunny day, with just a slight breeze. Joe
squinted at the top of his tower, admiring the five-element 20
meter monobander he had built the previous winter. It was an
imposing sight, yet had never been used. Joe was the last ham.

Joe never intended to be the last ham, but it worked out
that way. He thought back to how it had all started in the 80's
when the FCC created the no-code Tech license. Joe considered
that action the biggest blunder any government agency had ever
perpetrated on the citizens of the United States of America.

"Just think of it," Joe had remarked, "an amateur radio
license with no Morse code requirements! It will mean ruin for
us all!" Joe ignored the fact that the no-code license brought
new blood into the hobby after the amateur ranks had been
shrinking for many years. He refused to notice that after the
FCC created this new license category, the number of active hams
increased at a dizzying rate.

Joe hated no-code hams. He wouldn't accept the no-code
license as just another way of entering Amateur ranks, and
refused to acknowledge that many no-coders upgrade to higher-
class licenses. No explanation was good enough for Joe.

Joe and some like-minded cronies hung out on the local
repeater, where they expounded at length their belief that the
new hams are somehow less than human. They even suggested that
the way to clean up the ham bands was to get rid of all 2-by-3
calls. They joked that everyone ought to own a no-code Tech.
When new operators dared talk to Joe or his buddies, they found
themselves humbled, scolded, and scorned.

In his zeal to control "his" airwaves, Joe monitored the
local repeater with a stop-watch, to make sure interlopers
"ID'ed" on time. If they went a little over, he gave them a
tongue-lashing. He even harassed them when they operated
perfectly, just to make sure they knew they weren't welcome.

Of course, Joe never gave his callsign when he did this. He
regarded himself not as a jammer, but as a radio cop -- keeping
the ham bands pure. Soon others joined Joe's cause. After all,
"The new no-coders made two meters sound like CB!"

Slowly at first, then at a faster and faster rate, newcomers
dropped out of the local clubs, then off the air completely. Joe
was ecstatic. It was working; he was saving the airwaves.

The number of active hams dropped to far fewer than when he
started. He figured only the "real hams" were left, so he didn't
mind when the Callbook shrunk to the size of a comic book. But
with so few hams, the political power of Amateur Radio
diminished. Soon ham spectrum shrunk, too.

That didn't bother Joe; he cared only about 2 and 20 meters.
He thought it was funny when the FCC auctioned many VHF and UHF
bands, "those no-coder hangouts," to commercial interests.

Finally, citing "no further need for an Amateur
license category," the FCC stopped issuing new licenses. Before
long, Joe and his buddies were the only hams left. But that was
fine. After all, they all got their licenses back when hams took
tests at FCC offices, and not at one of those VEC jokes that
allowed an applicant to take a test here or there.

Joe and his cronies spent long hours ragchewing on 20,
bragging about how good things were. Occasionally they paused,
but only to note when one of their clan became a "silent key."

Then, one day, Joe called CQ on twenty meters and got no
reply. He tried again the next day with the same result. He
kept trying for a week, but no one ever came back to him.
Finally, he called one of his friends on the twisted pair, to set
up a contact. But, an elderly-sounding lady informed him
that his friend was no longer among the living.

Joe paged through his old, dog-eared Callbook. But he
couldn't find a single listing of anyone he had worked recently.
That's when he realized he was the only one left.

Joe had just started back toward the house when he suddenly
tired. He at down to rest on the grass. He felt a squeezing
pain in his chest, and his left arm ached. He lay back.

His antenna, and clouds drifting by above it, were the last
things he saw. But Joe and his like-minded friends had lived
long enough to accomplish their goal;

THEY HAD CLEANED UP THE AIRWAVES!