In article , "Carl R. Stevenson"
writes:

"N2EY" wrote in message
om...
"Carl R. Stevenson" wrote in message
...
Dick,

EVERY time there has been change of any real sort in ham radio, there
have been cranky olde fartz like you preaching "end of the world" doom
and gloom ... and every time it has not come to pass ...

There have also been predictions and promises of a "brave new world"
that the new changes would bring. Which also did not come to pass.

I would submit that the change from spark to CW was a big, progressive
change.

Sure. Hams did it voluntarily.

Likewise the change from AM to SSB.

To a certain extent. But the change had its downside, too. Ham radio used to
get a lot of free publicity and recruitment in the form of SWLs hearing hams on
AM. That pretty much ended with the switch to SSB. The number of new hams
slowed down (in part) because of that change.

From plain RTTY to things like AMTOR, PACTOR, PSK31, etc.

Plain RTTY is still very much in use, thank you. AMTOR is pretty much dead, I
am told. Of course what really drove all that was PC/soundcard setups becoming
affordable.

Did these changes come about overnight? No.

Actually, the change from spark to CW took only a few years.

When hams got back on the air in 1919, the dream station was a 200 meter spark
kilowatt with rotary gap, kickback preventer, etc. Good for 1000 miles when
everything worked. Within 5 years such a station was an antique, replaced by a
CW set on the shortwaves (80, 40, even 20 meters) using a tube of much lower
power but much greater performance. Two things convinced hams of that era to
change: the 1921 Transatlantic Tests, where the superiority of CW vs Spark was
demonstrated in the number of stations heard by Godley in Scotland, and the
first shortwave transatlantic QSO in 1923 (1XAM and 1MO to French 8AB on 110
meters).

It wasn't lectures or laws that got hams to change, it was demonstrations by
other hams.

Did OTs bitch and whine? Yes.

Where you there? I think not. ;-)

Witness:

conversion from spark to CW;
conversion from AM to SSB;
introduction of packet radio and other "new-fangled @^#%$ computer
thingies";

None of these were forced on hams by regulatory change. Hams adopted
them voluntarily. For example, spark wasn't outlawed for hams until
1927, even though it was essentially abandoned by hams by 1923 or 24.

Nobody is proposing a regulatory change that will prohibit or in any way
restrict the USE of Morse ...

OH YES THEY ARE!!!!

Check this out from ARRL's coverage of the VEC gathering:

"Maia's proposal suggested upgrading all current Tech and Tech Plus licensees
to General and allowing their use of all bands. Beginner licensees should be
granted call signs from the NA-NZ#xxx call sign block, he said. Both Maia and
Neustadter suggest ways to streamline the number of license classes. Maia
offered up the possibility of asking the FCC to eliminate the Morse testing
requirement immediately, easing code exam format restrictions"

here it comes:

"and giving serious thought to dropping CW-only subbands as well."

The only CW-only subbands are on 6 and 2 meters. I don't think those are the
subbands Freddy wants to drop. I think he means "CW/data subbands" - on HF.

all that's being asked for is to eliminate the
test requirement that even the FCC and the IARU admit are not in the
best interest of the future of ham radio.

That's what YOU propose. W5YI & Co. are already on the next page.

Nobody is being forced to do anything ... in fact, the proposed/anticipated
change will STOP forcing folks to do something that many don't want to
do ...

So, the "None of these were forced on hams by regulatory change." argument
doesn't hold water Jim.

Sure it does. The point being that none of the historic changes you cite
involved rules changes.

AM is still popular on HF - in fact, more popular than 20-30 years
ago. What caused hams to abandon AM in large numbers was the simple
fact that an SSB transceiver was less expensive than an AM
receiver-transmitter combo of equal effective power. That transition
also drastically reduced the amount of homebrewing done by hams.

What drastically reduced the amount of homebrewing done by hams
is a combination of the following:

1) technology got more "complicated" for the uninitiated

And for the initiated. Yet we hams are supposed to keep up with technology, are
we not? A lot of the reasons given for dropping the code test by NCVEC are
about "technically qualified persons" and "advanced technology" and all that.
Yet what does it matter how "technically qualified" someone is if all they do
as a ham is use manufactured equipment in well established ways like HF SSB?
What is the essential difference between a Ph.D in EE ham using a Yaesu and a
bus driver using an Icom?

2) parts got harder to buy at reasonable prices in small
quantities

Not really. Compare the cost of parts in old catalogs compared to new ones -
then adjust for inflation. $100 for a ham rig in 1958 doesn't sound like much
until you realize that back then $5200/year was a good middle class annual
salary. At that level, $100 was a week's gross pay.

Of course if one is used to seeing the prices paid by manufacturers for
quantities in the thousands and up range, the single-unit prices are
outrageous. Always been that way. Which is howcum Heath could undercut homebrew
on things like power transformers 40+ years ago.

3) the performance and quality of "store-bought" gear
improved and at the same time the cost in (adjusted) $
dropped dramatically.

That I can agree with - sort of. The best-performing HF transceiver for under
$2000 today, however, is a kit.

Heck, you can buy a decent 2m transciever for $150 today
... something with performance, quality, reliability, and ergonomics
that the average ham couldn't duplicate for 3x that price when
buying parts in small quantities.

And it's a throwaway.

Does that mean I think homebrewing should roll over and die?
CERTAINLY NOT ...

But how will homebrewing survive? How many amateur radio HF or VHF transceivers
have you designed and built, Carl? If it's not worth your time and effort, how
can the rest of us be expected to do it?

the introduction of the no-code Tech license;

Which has not resulted in greatly increased longterm growth nor a
techno revolution.

If it weren't for the thousands of hams who have entered via the
no-code tech license, the ham population would be something
like 1/2 what it was in 1990 ...

That presumes none of them would have gotten licensed if the rules hadn't
changed. That's not reasonable. You're saying that we'd be down to ~257,000
hams by now if not for the changes to the Tech.

For a historical context, here are some numbers on the growth of US amateur
radio in the past 30 years or so. All numbers are rounded off but are accurate
to within 2%. Sources are various Callbooks:

US Hams:

1970: 270,000
1980: 350,000
1990: 514,000
2000: 680,000

Growth Rate:

1970 to 1980: 29.6% (120,000 net growth)
1980 to 1990: 46.8% (164,000 net growth)
1990 to 2000: 32.2% (166,000 net growth)

Oddly enough, percentage growth slowed down after the introduction of code test
waivers and the Tech lost its code test. The total net growth in the '90s was
almost exactly the same as in the '80s, even though the US population was
larger.

Do you have numbers to disprove the above?

Since the restructuring of 2000, we're up about 12,000 hams. In three years and
three months.

And no techno revolution, either. Who gave us PSK-31 and APRS?

When you start out with an old, greying demographic (and I'm
no "spring chicken"), if there are no newcomers, the population
can only drop dramatically.

Sure. But you assume there will be no newcomers solely because of the code
test. The facts say differently.

73 de Jim, N2EY