On Mar 11, 12:26*pm, bpnjensen wrote:
On Mar 11, 9:09*am, Michael Black wrote:



On Thu, 11 Mar 2010, notbob wrote:
Another question. *Being a big usenet user, but new to amateur radio,
I've been looking at all the groups available. *This one appeared to
have the least noise for a general discussion group, so I posted here..
Is this type of question ok, here, or is there a more appropriate
group for rank newbie questions I'm sure to be pestering the ham
community with? *

Well you're really confused, because this newsgroup has nothing to do with
amateur radio. *There's a whole hierarchy, rec.radio.amateur.* that's
intended for that. *They cover a wide variety of topics, and there's even
a moderated one.

This newsgroup is about listening. *"Shortwave" is in the title since it
sort of defined what the newsgroup was supposed to be about, the same way
that back forty years "SWL" meant "shortwave listening" but often the same
people also did BCB DXing and monitoring the public service bands. *It's a
description of the type of person, not the spectrum to be covered.

That confuses a lot of people, they think this is for amateur radio
because it's "shortwave". But it was never meant to be a place to discuss
amateur radio, beyond discussing monitoring the ham bands (which has
always had some followers). *The charter defines that, and the fact that
there is a whole hierarchy intended for amateur radio should also
reinforce that. *Besides. *amateur radio isn't just about shortwave,
indeed while once you couldn't really get a ham license without starting
out on the shortwave bands, now I suspect there are a good percentage,
maybe even a small majority, who have never operated on the shortwave
bands.

* * Michael

My thanks to both Mark H. and Michael for their reponses. *Both
informative, and this one philosophically worthy as well.

I am currently thinking of getting an amateur license actually, even
if I never get on the air. *Not sure why - I used to have one decades
ago (WB1GAL), and never got it off the ground due to inherent
limitations in manual dexterity (back then, code was de rigueur; now
it is optional for most all classes)...the theory and regs were more
or less a snap, even though I am not an electronics guy...

Maybe just for the cachet - we Californians are all about superficial
appearance and keeping up, after all ;-) *SWL is still my first love
when it comes to radio.

Bruce

I hope you won't give up on code. It doesn't require a lot of manual
dexterity to send code at a reasonable rate. You might not become a
speed demon sending/copying code at 50 wpm, but who cares? You can
have a ton of fun on the CW portions of the bands.

When I first got my license I had no intention of learning code. I
figured I'd stay mostly on the voice portion of the bands, but my
interests in the hobby kept expanding. Soon I was active in digital
modes like RTTY and PSK-31. Now I spend 99% of my time operating in CW
mode with a paddle and keyer, and it's about a thousand times more
addictive than any other part of the hobby I've encountered thus far.
Well worth the initial investment of time and energy to learn code.

Steve