On Feb 18, 11:15�pm, "
wrote:
From: Ian White GM3SEK on Sun, 18 Feb 2007
22:23:56 +0000

* *The railroad system in the USA is not small and it is also
* *not the biggest carrier of freight over here.

Actually, that depends on how you define "biggest".

*Outside of
* *the roll-on containers carried by rail between drop-off
* *and pick-up points, the majority of land freight here goes
* *by truck on our large highway system.

Freight transportation professionals measure by the unit
of ton-mile. By that measure, rail is the #1 provider of US
freight transportation.

* *Most of the railways over here had begun converting to
* *data communications in various forms prior to 1940.

That's true. Some manual Morse telegraphy survived into the
1960s, but in general the use of teletype and voice comms
had become standard by the 1950s. Also, much of the need
for telegraph communications was eliminated by changes to
the dispatching systems in use.


* *I first "fired up" on HF in February 1953, part of my being
* *assigned to a US Army communications station in Tokyo. *

A station that was maintained by several hundred Army personnel.

That
* *was a small 1 KW HF transmitter using TTY FSK. *There were
* *three dozen other transmitters there; six more would be
* *added by 1955. *NONE of the radio circuits of this 3rd
* *largest Army station used any OOK CW mode of modulation.

However, that was one station in one place. It was not necessarily
representative of all military radio communications at the time, nor
of amateur radio communications, then or now.

* *In my subsequent career change after service into
* *electronics design engineer I've never had a requirement
* *to use OOK CW on radio. *

You have also never been a radio amateur. Nor a professional
radio operator.

Until 2005 when my wife and I bought
* *a new car having a keyless entry radio-on-a-chain-fob. *That
* *fob transmitter is OOK CW. *But, its data rate is beyond
* *human cognition, ANY human.

* *In 1969 my father and father-in-law were still alive. *Both
* *watched, in widely separated geographical locations (in
* *the comfort of their homes), LIVE video from the moon as
* *the first two humans stepped onto the lunar surface. *Both
* *my father and father-in-law were born in the year 1900...
* *one year before Marconi's trans-Atlantic test radio
* *transmission and three years before the Wright Brothers
* *demonstrated the first heavier than air flight. *Both
* *astronauts plus Collins in the lunar orbiter were in
* *constant touch with earth by radio...for both
* *communications and telemetry, guided there by computers
* *of several kinds, on earth as well as in the reentry
* *and descent/ascent capsule.

Of what relevance is that to amateur radio?

* *I have nothing against telegraphic skills nor anyone using
* *those for personal pleasure. *

Many of your statements elsewhere on Usenet contradict that.

However, in the light of
* *advancement of the electronic arts, communications, radio,
* *methods that ALL of us can share, I think there is an
* *over-much emphasis by radio hobbyists on telegraphic arts.

IOW, it's OK with you if someone uses it, as long as they don't
emphasize it.

* *Manual telegraphy IS a historic first but it has been
* *supplanted in practical communications means at our
* *disposal...on land, in the air, on the sea, and in space.

Morse Code is also practical communications. And it is widely
used in amateur radio today.

* *I think we should be looking FORWARD to the future, not
* *back to the past. *Others disagree. *I leave it at that.

What does "FORWARD to the future" really mean in that context?

Jim, N2EY