Arnold wrote:
On Sat, 06 Mar 2004 19:15:02 +0000, Ken Scharf stood up and said:

As for the rest of your comments, I suppose you have made up your mind
and have burned your license, framed the ashes, and sold your radio gear
to the CB'er next door.


I think you missed the point of his post. It is an editorial on the
state of the hobby and I think it drives home the current attitudes many
(no all, of course) hams have towards the proposed changes the ARRL are
supporting. It's really human nature; many people are resistant to
change for variety of reasons and sometimes it takes a long, hard look
in the mirror to see how silly this resistance is. The point being, if
one insists on "living in the past", then their is no future. This
applies to everything, not just amateur radio.

And I don't think the original poster has burned his license. He's
probably doing more than you or I to save the hobby by shoving the
egocentrism that many hams exhibit right back in their face. And for
the record, I don't think the ARRL went far enough in their
recommendations. I believe their should only be two licenses: a
beginners with VHF/UHF access and limited HF access, and a "general"
license with full privileges and no CW required. Before you (or anybody
else) flame me for this, note that I do know CW. The only reason I
learned it was to get HF privileges. I maybe had 3 or 4 QSOs using CW
but it's not for me. I find other digital modes like PSK31 to be more
fun. But that's just me.

I would almost agree with you on having 'only' two licenses. I still
like the idea of the 'EXTRA CLASS' license as a means of promoting self
improvment. It only offers a very small increase in privileges, several
small slivers of bandwidth allocated for CW (and perhaps keep the extras
phone slivers as well). But do combine the advanced and general class
band segments and open them to everyone without the need to know CW.
The CW band segments should still remain, but call them 'narrow
bandwidth' segments for use ONLY with modes requiring less than say
500hz bandwidth. This would include things like digital, PSK31, and of
course, CW (which could become a digital computer mode no longer
requiring any gray cells to perform the incoding and decoding!).
Re-evaluate how much of each band should be set aside for these narrow
bandwidth segments, perhaps.

There are many hams that love cw (and would use it even if it was NOT
required) for things like QRP backpacking (these itty bitty rigs are
quite popular, the kits sell like hotcakes). CW IS the ultimate weak
signal mode. I do say this with second hand knowledge though, like you
I havn't used CW much in years, but I wish could improve on that!
I got my Extra when they lowered the CW requirement to 5 wpm and only
the written test stood in my way to get from Advanced to Extra. (The
challenge of the written test was something I could handle, and it gave
me a chance to bone up on theory I hadn't looked at since college.)

In closing on that, I wouldn't push CW on anybody, but I would hate to
see it die out.