RadioBanter - View Single Post - Code Free "It's part of the dumbing down of America," according to CDC

[email protected]

wrote:
From: on Fri, Dec 29 2006 3:22 pm

Stefan Wolfe wrote:
wrote in message
From: on Thurs, Dec 28 2006 6:04 pm
wrote:
Stefan Wolfe wrote:

Hey Len, you've been flaming code on these groups since at least 1996...I
can still remember when you got on the rec.radio groups the first time.

No you can't. There was no Stefan Wolfe here in 1996. And there is no
amateur radio license issued to Stefan Wolfe.

Maybe he was a UK ham troll then?

I have to congratulate the UK trolls. They're the best.

Was I on that early? :-) I was on BBSs and doing letter-
writing a lot earlier than that, over a decade before.

I'm sure "Stefan" recalls that, too.

Somehow, as a brilliant electronics engineer you were never able to master
the skill of sending and receiving letters represented as dits and dahs and
this kept you off HF...

Is that what's been keeping you off of HF? No license is issued to
Stefan Wolfe.

Odd, but Len has been on HF through SHF. All without code.

From VLF on up through 25 GHz...transmitting LEGALLY. :-)

I've never described myself or even implied that I was a
"brilliant electronics engineer." I've had lots of industry
experience in radio-electronics since 1952 (military), then
beginning 1956 (aerospace) in southern California. ONE radio-
relevant US patent, 3848191, issued 1974.

I had managed about 8 WPM in receiving morse code in the 60s,
then thought about the uselessness of such effort seeing as I
had worked in Big Time HF communications a decade earlier, all
WITHOUT having to learn or to use any morse code. The minimal
was then 13 WPM for a ham license. I'd already had 3 years of
military experience, leading to operating team supervisor, on
long-haul HF circuits across the Pacific and south to the
Phillippines, using RTTY and SSB (multi-channel commercial
kind) with some old-standard FAX plus being supervisor grade
on multi-channel microwave radio relay equipment. So *WHY*
was this old, old morse code so damn important to amateurs?
Came to the conclusion they all wanted to just recreate a
pioneering past where very few had participated, didn't really
go in for the comradeship that was supposed to be in ham radio.

Besides, CB had been created in 1958 and that was good for
local communications. The Los Angeles area didn't lack for
'other communicators' in the early 1960s. :-)

but you always had vastly superior academic skills
in the field of RF that fact seemed to make the skill of simple Morse
communication seem so irrelevant in today's modern world.

Len's knowledge of RF had nothing to do with it (sorry Len). Morse
Code became irrelevant all by itself.

Where the fork do these TROLLS come from, Brian? :-(

There's this bridge in England...

This twit obviously wants to FIGHT with words. Poor guy is
already gunned down and carted off to Boot Hill but he not
know it...

The un-SK.

On the other hand, I've memorized a few formulas a tad more
complicated than Ohms's Law of Resistance...so that probably
is "rocket science" to some amateurs.

Can this formula be put into Excel?

Now you no longer need that skill and the doors have swung open. Does that
mean you will make yourself and your brilliant mind available to the
unwashed masses of hams

There are no unwashed masses of hams. Maybe there are a few
individuals at hamfests that might pay more attention to personal
hygeine, but no masses.

Hmmm...the average ham mass is about 77 Kg. :-)

Maybe the desk-bound contester is 10 Kilo more from sitting
in front of his raddio for so long? :-)

Just WHAT am I supposed to "make available" to those ham
"masses?" Does Steppin Wolfe expect miracles from the
brass-pounders who've tried to pound ME for years about
their love for morse code?

What happened to all the "smarts" among the brass-pounders?
Why couldn't THEY do the "innovation" for their "unwashed"
brethren? None of the brass-pounders seem to answer that.

They're just very average people, with the exception of playing human
modem.

who only know how to pound keys?

Welp, there are a bunch who know how to pound their chests. That's
what the ARRL VP was saying when K4YZ attacked me.

Some of those Mighty Macho Morsemen pound what they think
are the chest mass of King Kong...but are still little
code monkeys dancing to the manual morse organ of that
publishing house in Connecticutt. I doubt many of them
could climb even a few stairwells of the Empire State
building in NYC...with or without biplanes buzzing
around trying to shoot them.

Len, that was mean.

Will you now be
getting your extra class and dazzling us with new ideas and inventions that
will forever modernize the amateur modes, you know, the sort of achievements
you always said would be possible if only they got rid of that nasty Morse
test?

Tsk, the Troll from the UK has strapped on his holsters
and wants to walk down the street for a shoot-out... :-)

That is sooo sad. The subjects in England may have holsters, but
allowed nothing to put in them.

Thinking back to what I've written in here, I've NOT said
much about "achievements possible if the code test was
removed." That wasn't my point. The code test for an
AMATEUR radio license was just an anachronism, a left-over,
something that mattered ONLY to the very old timers who
had to take it (and therefore everyone else has to take it
too).

Uphill in the snow both ways.

Amateur radio IS a fine, absorbing HOBBY pursuit. It should
be open to ALL who can qualify for the license through the
written tests. It is *NOT* nor should it ever have been
some kind of Living Museum of Archaic Radio Technology. But,
in the minds of the pro-coders, that's all it was...a
Living Museum of Morsemanship.

Sad.

Morse code was NEVER an intellectual achievemnt, NEVER a
'technology.' It was, is, and will remain, just a psycho-
motor skill acquired through hours of practice. It requires
an APTITUDE for the on-off patterns similar to drumbeat
rhythms. Some take a VERY long time to master it at slow
speeds while others can learn quickly to achieve high rates.

Some got to learn it in the military, including three hots and a cot,
or the threat of being infantry or potato peeler.

The OLD S25 of the ITU Radio Regulations had a political
flavor to it...that of mandating adminstrations to test for
morse code for licenses having "below 30 MHz privileges."
Now "30 MHz" is an arbitrary choice. It is the top of the
definition of the HF decade in the spectrum. The next-
higher amateur radio band begins at 50 MHz and distance
propagation isn't very good up there. The limit on 30 MHz
APPEASED the old-timers in ham radio who regarded the ham
HF bands as "theirs" and wanted to keep morse code in the
very worst way. The International Amateur Radio Union
saw the present-day realism and did not want to appease the
old-timers or give in to their morse mythos. S25 got an
almost total rewrite in 2003 to bring it up to relatively
modern times. [S25 hasn't quite reached this new millennium
yet but give it time...]

Now, as to ORIGINAL INNOVATIONS, I can think of only TWO and
both of those done by Brits: Peter Martinez for PSK31 and
Mike Gingell for his R-C Polyphase Network used in SSB
modulation-demodulation other than by more-expensive crystal
filters. Those were new, original. Mike Gingell did his
Polyphase network for a PhD in the UK before moving to USA.
Martinez used Gingell's network in a ham transceiver
application three decades ago and has continued to innovate
things in HF radio. All the rest are ADAPTATIONS of EXISTING
commercial applications in circuits and systems...some very
good but still ADAPTATIONS, not ground-breaking new things.

How about if he does as much innovating as has N2EY, W3RV, K0HB, K8MN,
and K4YZ.

W3RV, K8MN, and K4YZ will be LOST behind the front panel of
any radio having semiconductors. N2EY now builds KITS
using semiconductors...his last described tube rig was a
kluge of tube circuits made from the equivalent of dumpster
diving (minimal cost some kind of achievement). Hans
probably can go behind the front panel and understand things
since he remains working in true high-tech electronics (the
only questions there is his being a 'manager,' a postion
not always held has having real-savvy technical smarts by
those working in the electronics industry). :-)

Sometimes they are referred to as "Dump Huck."

Hmmm? Did I leave Cecil off the list on purpose?

Cecil got tired of the self-righteous, self-important few
morsemen on RRAP and inhabited RRAA. Cecil likes to try
out antenna designs...and does some good things there from
what I've read elsewhere. Cecil has more patents awarded
than I...perhaps five (?) in all.

I recall Cecil succumbing to their jeers to join them on CW. Poor
******* so wanted to prove himself to them that he operated CW with a
thunderstorm overhead and lightning alqds. After such heroics, they
still don't like his ideas and ostracize him.

We will all be waiting Len.

We? You are trolls?

They are...Steppin Wolfe and all the other anony-mousies
eager to do Word War III in here. :-)

FCC 06-178 will become LAW of the USA soon. Whatever follows
(insofar as amateur radio is concerned) will happen. The
"predictions" in here are just Guesses, suppositions based
on individual's mode biases. What will be will be...

Best regards,

Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.