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Clem · December 17th 06, 06:05 PM posted to rec.radio.swap

wrote in news:1166369273.864290.176050
@t46g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

the sky is falling oh my oh my--no code, no steam engines, no dials on
phones, no steamships, no reheating the leftovers in the oven, no cloth
diapers, and they even have taken the cranks off the fronts of the cars
(how will we start them)

You missed the point entirely. While making things easier is a great
vision, there comes a point when making something to easy to perform
will in the long term make something more difficult.

No matter how much bandwidth the FCC provides, there is only a limited
amount. Think of it as the highway that will never expand but the total
amount of traffic does.

Given the projected reports on how many stations will upgrade to HF
equipment combined with an inundation of new licensees whose only
intentions are to operate under 30mhz and you have a formula for a
frequency pileup.

The lack of cw knowledge reduces the ability of an operator to function
especially in times of an emergency. Propagation beacons use cw to
identify themselves as well as beacons used in aviation. The point here
being, how will you positively know your listening to the correct beacon
if you can't read the id. Digital stations such as pactor, packet, amtor
and the like can if initiated identify themselves with cw in place of a
digital transmission.

No, the FCC blew this big time. They didn't take into account all the
facets of HF operation that operators use to comply with local and
international regulations. A non-code HF operator will not have the
ability to detect or determine the seriousness of emergency cw calls
should one incur.

Those stations that have the ability to detect them may have a problem
requesting a standby from other stations operating near a distress
frequency.

Since my initial licensing in 1991 I have only heard two distress calls
using cw. Both were handled by other stations, but again, the point here
being that this situation does periodically exist and as a consequence of
our licensing, all radio operators should be capable of providing
assistance when it is required without any allowances for a lack of
common sense, knowledge or ability.

Last but not least, I feel it is just wrong to eliminate a testing phase
that has been in existence for many years, allowed tens of thousands
people nationally and millions worldwide the pleasure of amateur radio
because less than one half of one percent of them say cw is to difficult.

73 de N9LCP - Marc