Al Klein wrote:
On Sat, 22 Jul 2006 08:45:57 -0400, "ohioradioham"
wrote:

Blow Code - your ideas will damn amateur radio and kill it.

That's evidently why the number of hams kept decreasing until code was
eliminated, right?

The drop would have been far worse than it is now had the CW testing
speed not been reduced.

Oh, wait a minute - the numbers didn't START decreasing until code was
eliminated.

Sorry Al, but the drop of CW came around the explosion of the Internet.
Young people see our hobby as outdated and the CW testing requirement
reinforces that. What to see a huge drop in licenses? Bring back CW
testing for all licenses and raise the speeds again. There will be
hardly any new licenses issued if someone made such a gross and stupid
error in judgement.


Forcing CW onto newcomers will only turn them away
from amateur radio since CW is seen by outsiders as old-fashioned and
out-of-date. This is the 21st Century and people do not want to be forced
to learn and use and communication method developed in the 19th Century.

People today don't want to be forced to learn - whether it's CW, or
how to build a trivial little interface between a transceiver (modern
invention) and a computer (another modern invention), or some antenna
theory. Just hand them a license and a radio and they want to be on
the air.

Grow up and face reality.

Reality is that ham radio is turning into a multi-band CB - just buy a
radio and get on the air without actually knowing how it works or how
to use it.

CW testing has nothing to do with knowing how the radio works or how it
operates. Thanks for reinforcing some of my previous positions.

The ham bands were filled with idiots when we had all that CW testing.
CW testing has never kept out the idiots and never will.

Besides, since the US is a democracy, the ham bands will turn into
whatever we let it turn into because the majority rules and CW freaks
like yourself are increasingly in the minority.