"Woody" wrote in
news:%RJGg.27319$uV.13889@trnddc08:

Well there ya have it folks.... 50wpm saves lives. So how does it
work? Turn up the speaker really loud and place it [face down] on the
person's chest, while
an op in South America tapped out universally accepted words that
would mimic an atrioventricular rhythm?

Did someone drop you on your head at birth? The reason 50wpm can save
lives is probably a bit complex for you to get both your functioning
neurons around, but believe me, having done CW for a living for some
decades I do know that it can save lives. And if you're faster than the
average bear at it, you can tell someone on the scene things they need to
know all that much faster.

Wrong theatre? OK...

Maybe if a person is trapped on a sinking ship in the Indian Ocean
you, in Siberia, could tap out a message to someone in Madagascar [who
happened to be awake at an odd hour] and that person also owned a
large SAR chopper, they could jump in it, saving the time of relaying
to anyone else, and go pluck them from certain death?

OH, or better yet... if your neighbor is also a ham.... and your wife
fell over with an AMI, you could call your neighbor, give him a freq,
then the two of you
get set up and running, then you can send a 50wpm message asking your
neighbor to call an ambulance? BTW, if the phones are down, you ask
him to get in his
car and drive down to the local EMS agency, and bring them to you.
Life saved!
I'm impressed.
rb

So apparently YOUR answer to this question is that you couldn't send your
name if your own life depended on it.

Believe me, I get it. I don't think CW ought to be mandatory and it
isn't where I live. I do think people who intend to use it should learn
how to use it properly, though. For CW to be effective, both operators
must be competent. IF they are, they can often transcend barriers of
language that only digital modes can get over. In my own case, the fact
that I could read CW and read written Spanish a bit once enabled me to
render aid to a burning fishing boat. (There were other more routine
examples of where the language barrier was crossed by CW--many messages I
copied were not in English at all, but were readable by their end
recipients).


--
Dave Oldridge+
ICQ 1800667