RadioBanter - View Single Post - A question for nickle Generals and Extras. Would you renew your license?

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Dave, you were wasting your time & effort on the ******s in here.

Dave Platt wrote:
In article et,
Slow Code wrote:

What? I ask a friendly question as to who would re-new their license if
Code speeds were increased to what they should be and I get called a
troll. Well eat **** and die. I got a real Extra class license. You
nickle hams are really unfriendly assholes sometimes.

Well, Slow Code, I'll give you a straight (and I hope friendly) answer
to your question. I'll then give you a straight (and I hope not-
unfriendly) explanation as to why I believe people are calling you a
troll.

The first answer: well, I think I'd certainly *try* to renew my
license. My CW is distinctly rusty - I use it only rarely, and I'm
not sure I've ever managed to copy 13 WPM (let alone 20) well enough
to pass the one-minute-error-free barrier, or be able to answer the
necessary number of questions. So, it'd take a bunch of listening and
practice to reach that level.

I'm not sure I have enough time free to do it. I've got a busy life,
work full-time plus a bit, and much of my ham-radio playing time goes
into other areas of the service (I'm an ARES/RACES AEC for my city, a
mutual-aid comms responder for the county, and I've put in a huge
boatload of hours over the past couple of years helping redesign and
rebuild and debug the local hospital's repeater system). Getting
really serious about doing high-speed CW would consume a lot of time,
which would necessarily subtract from my ability to (e.g.) spend many
hours of circuit analysis and modelling and experimentation to figure
out why the fancy commercial repeaters we bought had such
lousy-sounding audio (turns out the designer had mis-used the
discriminator IC, forcing it to "clip" the signal internally, *and*
had messed up the design of the de-emphasis network.)

And, I have no assurance that I'd ever reach that level. As several
other people have commented, it's perfectly possible for people to
work, hard and honestly, at copying CW for years, and never be able to
reach the 13 WPM level. I strongly suspect that to some extent,
CW-copying is tied to certain sorts of neurological organization in
the ear/brain system - some people may be born with more potential
ability to handle high-speed CW than others. Effort or no, some
people seem unable to learn to copy CW at all, others can do so but
never become very good at it, and *many* people report hitting the "13
WPM wall" and never being able to copy reliably at rates much faster
than that.

Now, in your previous epistles on the subject, you and your nym-clone
were advocating not only requiring testing for 13 WPM (General) and 20
WPM (Extra), but also making the no-code license a one-year
nonrenewable. If that proposal were accepted, there's a strong
possibility that I'd end up being kicked off of the air the next time
my license came due... either because I was unable to push up to 13
WPM no matter how hard I tried, or because I'd devoted my time to
other aspects of ham radio and hadn't taken time to study-up.

So - that's my answer. I might end up being able to renew my license
(although probably not at the 20 WPM level), I might fail the CW test,
or I might just decide that the "old boy's club" had made it clear
that they didn't want anybody other than rabid CW operators on the
air, and decide to go do something else productive with my time.

Now - that being said - let's address why you were being called a
troll. I think it's because it's quite clear to people reading these
threads that you have a serious agenda, sir. You've made several
attempts (apparently under several posting IDs - some refer to these
as "sock puppets") to drum up support for your CW Uber Alles rules
change proposal. You've scoffed at, or simply ignored, the many
people who have pointed out that your proposed changes are 180 degrees
out of phase with the international trends (i.e. the WARC rules), and
with the FCC's publicly-stated feelings on the matter, and that your
proposals are essentially equivalent to ones which have already been
ruled out by the Powers That Be.

In short, the "what if?" question you asked is entirely hypothetical.
There's just no chance at all that the FCC would enact the sort of
CW-centric licensing rules you have proposed. Ain't gonna happen.
Your asking questions about "well, if it _did_, what would you do" is
probably part of why you're being called a troll.

Numerous people have responded to you, expressing their opinions that
your rules would decimate the ranks of amateur radio by forcing off of
the air a large percentage of today's licensed operators. Your
"friendly question" seems to be intended to try to address that
question, but you phrased your inquiry in somewhat-loaded terms, and
in a way which almost guarantees that you won't receive an accurate
and unbiased set of answers which actually represent the feelings and
opinions of this newsgroup's readers.

To sum it up, your way of presenting your agenda probably leads people
to believe that you aren't serious about debating or discussing the
issue... and that's probably another part of why you're being called a
troll.

I agree with you that the Amateur Radio Service (and hobby) benefits
greatly from being hams to like to study, learn, advance their skills,
and use what they know. That's one of the specific purposes of amateur
radio here in the U.S., and I think it's great.

I *disagree* with you that the ability to learn to copy CW at 13 - 20
WPM is, or should be, the "litmus test" which decides whether a person
is Worthy of being a ham.

Your fixation on CW is, I think, actively interfering with your
ability to support ham radio by promoting *all* aspects of technical
and operational learning. I believe that your attitude hurts ham
radio more than it helps.

That's my $0.05 worth, adjusted for inflation. Take it for what it's
worth for you.

[and, I'm sorry to say, based on your past postings I don't really
expect you to address the meat of what I've said. I expect that
you'll toss off a one- or two-liner, dismiss what I've written, and
keep on as you have been. I'd be pleasantly surprised to be wrong
about this!]

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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