Len:

You might have said, I missed it if that is the case, when/if CW is dead,
are you going to grab your extra ticket?

Maybe, maybe not. That's MY option, not based on the puerile
taunts of middle-schoolers who are of middle age going "nyah,
nyah, can't get a ticket, can't get a ticket!!!" :-)

Hmmm...I started out in HF communications with much more "action"
than the average, doing 24/7 comms with high-power (up to 40 KW)
transmitters shooting across the Pacific, plus doing VHF, UHF,
and - finally - multi-channel microwave radio relay over a half
century ago...winding up as an operations and maintenance
supervisor NCO. Then, on release from active duty, getting a
First 'Phone at an FCC field office (no COLEMs then) and working
four broadcast stations as vacation relief or on weekends or full
time for WREX-TV to gain enough money to come out west...having
already interviewed for and secured a job at Hughes Aircraft.
That led to a whole career, major major change to electronics
engineering winding up as senior staff in design. I'm supposed
to get a ham license to "prove I know something about radio?!?!?"

I don't have anything to "prove" to a bunch of yokels who want
to recreate the 1930s and 1940s in radiotelegraphy! Geezus,
gimme a break from those neanderthallers! What the fork do
think a ham license IS...some kind of Nobel Award for Science?!?
:-)

Amateur radio is fun, a recreational avocation done not for money
but for personal pleasure. It involves NO different radio physics
than any other radio service but it allows all the choice of
buying state-of-the-art radios to use or in building them from
their own designs. It requires a license to transmit RF due to a
federal law (an act of Congress) that created a federal regulatory
agency for ALL civil radio. The mindset of many hase been
"conditioned" by a certain membership organization to be much,
much more, a virtual lifestyle that has gotten too deep into the
myth and fantasy of long-ago times and dreams of glory and heroism
that never happened.

One argument is that "a ham can have their OWN station." Yes, I've
had "my own station" or properly, one-third of it in a business
partnership with two others. I've built/converted three "stations"
and checked them thoroughly befoe selling them, never once "using"
them or caring to use them. I've designed and built two other
transceivers for CB, one a prototype for a CB company in Burbank
that went bankrupt when faced with off-shore CB products cut them
out of profit action.

"I can work the world on radio with an amateur license!!!" Yes,
and I could pick up a handset in Tokyo, at ADA Control, and talk
to Seattle, Anchorage, San Francisco, Hawaii, or Okinawa any time
of the day or night, as I did for a while in 1955...without any
"license" or even any specific HF with/without SSB schooling of
any kind. I can "talk" to the rest of the world any time I want
to on the Internet, and have, plus being able to share images
with dozens of long-time friends (from pre-Internet days) faster
than by surface mail, uninterrupted by vagaries of the ionosphere.

"I can explore new radio territory and advance the state of the
radio art" with a ham license. What the fork do some of these
cretins think I was DOING FOR A LIVING since 1956? Without a ham
license I've legally transmitted RF on frequencies ranging through
EM bands from LF into EHF, on up to 4mm wavelengths. Gotten one
patent as sole inventor, had a terrific time in the labs and in the
field, still do it once in a while.

I once "worked a station" ON the moon. No moonbounce stuff. I
have to learn morse code in order to do THAT as an amateur?!?
(I don't have to test for morse code at VHF and up, just for
frequencies below 30 MHz...where I began doing HF communications
a half century before...without having to know or use morse code
then or any time afterwards)

If so, ya wanna meet down on 3.840 and give art a run for his money--in a
gentlemanly way of course. Don't go with disruptive actions myself...
debate and argument yes, trouble no... suspect you might be the same...
could be fun, ya never know... grin

No. If anyplace on ham bands, it would be on 20m where a bunch
of ex-RCA Corporation folks hang out on Saturday mornings. Talk
there is shared-interest stuff, not the personal polemics of
self-propelled radio potentates. Listen for KD6JG and W6MJN,
among others. I know them by their real names, not callsigns.

"I can be FEDERALLY-AUTHORIZED with MY OWN CALLSIGN if I get a
ham license!!!" Wow, ain't that something (like I've already
done that, but not with a ham license). I know where to get a
good ham sandwich nearby, the vendors needing only a Health
Department license to operate. [great pastrami at one place]

I DO need to renew my Poetic License. Time to study for Mores
Goad. :-)

buy buy