On 09 Jul 2003 03:57:18 GMT, ospam (Larry Roll K3LT)
wrote:

This is not "negativity," just a plainly truthful assessment of the present
situation regarding licensing standards in the ARS.

My own feeling is that anyone who would whine about having to
"prepare" for the Element 2 written exam probably has never touched a
radio in his/her life other than maybe an AM/FM broadcast receiver.

With that said, and upon further consideration, I have to admit that
you're probably right, there probably will be some...and telling them
about how we used to have to hike barefooted 50 mile suphill both ways
to and from an FCC office to take the code test and the gawdawfullest
written exams anybody ever heard of isn't going to cut it with those
folks either. I myself might prefer to take a more positive
approach...yes, it's a pain in the neck to have to read that silly
book but look at the privileges you get once it's all over with, etc.

Every time I hear someone lamenting the supposed dumbing down of the
ARS, I can't help but think of the number of longtime hams I've seen
over the past few years who brought a brand new 2m or dual-band mobile
or HT, or an Icom 706MKIIG or Yaesu FT-100 into a club meeting to seek
help in programming it.

I know what you're talking about -- and I'll concede up front that a lot of
these technically-inept OT's are 20 WPM Extras to boot! However, I have

I dunno if I'd call them technically inept. These are guys who've
probably forgotten more about theory than I've ever learned. There are
other reasons for their difficulty with programming today's radios.

always strove to keep up with the times as far as basic technical knowledge
is concerned -- and not just the bare minimum required to keep beeping
or yakking. I have always been involved in digital modes, for instance, and
now use them more than CW! I have been my club's "Digital Mode Captain"
for the past four Field Days, and will try to pass that job over to some
newcomer next year, if only I could find one willing to open some books and
turn some pages to learn everything I have -- instead of being "Elmered"
with "hands on" training which only gives them the basic operational
procedure and none of the background.

The last two years at Field Day, the only guy attempting any digital
mode other than CW was a no-code Tech. He made a few SSTV contacts.

I'm not talking about relative newcomers
either, I'm talking about guys who were hams before I was even born.

Yup, I know. They're a real problem, all right. Usually the leaders of
the "Don't PL our repeater" pack of whiners.

We were forced to PL ours about a year ago when a temperature
inversion brought in signals on the input from users of four different
repeaters 50-75 miles or more away from ours. Our repeater's
transmitter was keyed down almost nonstop for about three hours one
day. That was the end...the technical committee decided it was easier
to beg forgiveness than obtain permission and enabled CTCSS on the
input (we'd been transmitting the tone on the output for years to
benefit those with radios with CTCSS decode). Funny thing was, nobody
really complained to the board or to the committee. There was one
group of four or five guys whose regular chitchat on every other
morning moved to another repeater because one of the guys has an older
radio that can't even transmit the tone let alone decode it on
receive, but they seemed to understand why we had to do it. They were
all older hams, but none of them has so far brought in a 2m rig to get
help programming it.

Furthermore, sometimes it's a no-code Tech who picks up the
old-timer's HT and shows him how to program it.

Sometimes, but certainly not often enough. The No-Code Techs are at the
top of the list of the technically inept, in spite of their protests to the
contrary.

In our club there are basically two guys they usually bring 'em to.
One is me (current General) and the other is a Technician. We've done
so many now that we generally just sit down and program the club
repeater into a memory (proper offset and tone of course) while they
stand there holding the manual and shaking their heads...but when we
first started we read a lot of manuals that were very obviously
written in Japanese and then translated into English and were very
little help even to us - and we've been programming programmable
radios almost since the first programmable scanners hit the market
(remember the old Bearcat 100?).

Never mind that the
HT's owner could have learned this for himself by reading the manual,
because many manufactuers' manuals leave a lot to be desired, and
we're talking about guys who once built microphones out of tuna fish
cans and can do 40WPM or better in their sleep.

Quite frankly, the tuna fish-can mics didn't sound that great, and the
40 WPM in their sleep would have sounded a lot better if they had used
25 WPM while wide awake.

Perhaps...but some of these guys are really amazing. We have at least
one guy in our club who can sit there and hold a conversation with
five other people, while across the room two guys are working a CW
contest, one operating and the other logging, and all of a sudden
he'll turn around and tell the ops, "Work that guy, we need him!"
Invariably when the call is punched into the dupe checker, we do in
fact need that contact for a multiplier, too.

This has always been the case, John -- I was one of the "technical
nerds" when I was a newcomer ham as well -- much to the dismay of
the OT's in my first club. And I don't claim to be a technical genius
or anything like it -- I have strictly "amateur" technical skills. I am,
however, technically self-sufficient as far as my own station set-up and
operation is concerned, and I have enough know-how to maintain our
club's repeaters, do all our computer logging for Field Day and other
contests, etc. etc.

I've always set up my own station equipment too. It hasn't fallen to
me to maintain a repeater yet. I understand the theory behind 'em but
haven't gained practical experience working on a repeater.

I don't disagree with you whatsoever about the technical abilities of
hams past or present. However, I don't assign that technical inability
to knowledge of the Morse code, either. The two are not related, no
matter how hard the no-coders struggle to make that very same
connection in their arguments.

Yet above you said (and I cut and paste here):

Sometimes, but certainly not often enough. The No-Code Techs are at the
top of the list of the technically inept, in spite of their protests to the
contrary.

Presumably, then, this means that the lack of technical proficiency is
not related to the lack of CW skills. Well...Technician is the
entry-level license. A Tech isn't expected to have attained the same
level of technical proficiency as an Extra or a General. When they do,
they take another test (or currently, two tests) and upgrade.

BTW, Larry, you were supposed to look me up when you came up this way,
I still owe you a roast beef from a bet we made several years ago and
you haven't even bothered to collect your winnings.

My apologies. I don't even remember the bet. I guess my brain is too
full of Morse code knowledge to retain such things, eh? Please refresh
my memory!

This happened during the weeks just prior to restructuring. There was
a discussion of how many license classes we were going to end up with.
Your prediction of three classes turned out to be correct. I'd
predicted two, and so still owe you a roast beef sandwich at Swiston's
in Tonawanda...when you get up to the Northtowns on one of your
occasional trips back to western NY.

73 DE John, KC2HMZ