Alun L. Palmer wrote:
" wrote in
ups.com:


Alun L. Palmer wrote:
" wrote in
oups.com:

From: Dave Heil on Fri, Dec 29 2006 7:33 am

wrote:
From: Dave Heil on Wed, Dec 27 2006 10:22 am
John Smith I wrote:
Dave Heil wrote:


Len, get a ham licence. You might even enjoy it.

73 de Alun, N3KIP

Hello, Alun. Okay, I'll write a letter to the FDA and post it
Wednesday...

I wasn't aware one needed a ham license to purchase and eat ham.

My wife and I had ham during the holidays. He tasted like
chicken...


The thing is Len, you don't need a licence to comment on the subject, but
if you are that interested then why don't you get one? There's no reason
you couldn't get an Extra licence now, so why not do it?

Sigh...Alun, this whole "charge" of "PROMISING to get
an extra out of the box" dates back six years and is, itself, a
FALSE charge of "impropriety." Miccolis has the "polite insult"
tactic of taking things out of context, then fabricating some
kind of "indignation" or even "outrage" at such alleged perfidy.
:-)

SIX YEARS AGO I wrote what amounts to a throw-away
comment as part of a longer message and Miccolis apparently
got hit in his mental eye and remembered it. He then
manufactured a FALSE charge of my "not keeping promises."
Decades ago I promised myself to never get married again.
Then I re-connected with my high-school sweetheart and
"broke" my "promise."

COULD I get an extra class amateur license now? Yes, I
COULD. But I am NOT promising to do so. I never promised
to do so six years ago...despite what Miccolis "charges."

Radio-electronics is - to me - a totally fascinating part of still-
advancing technology. So much so that I changed my life career
goals from being an illustrator-artist to electronic engineering.
I've never regretted that despite having an aptitude and some skill
and experience in professional illustration before my military
service. There is no visible end to changes possible or forth-
coming in radio-electronics (or electronics-radio) and it is fun to
see it all evolve, grow, become a part of our lives. I look forward
every month to see what is new, exciting, indeed revolutionary
in electronics technology described in the many trade
magazines I receive.

Do I "need" an amateur radio license? Personally speaking, NO.
But, it might be fun...or it might not...depending who there is to
communicate with and how to communicate. Having gotten into
HF radio communications over a half century ago (on a more
massive scale than most amateurs in this group experienced),
I have absolutely NO desire to do, learn (once again), or bother
with on-off keying CW just on the HF bands. If one has spent
three years of their life keeping 40+ HF transmitters running
24/7 on long-distance (over 2000 miles) radio circuits, the
thought of collecting 10, 100, or a 1000 "DX" contacts (each one
a sporadic, minimal exchange of information) just for the act of
collecting them is a non-starter to me.

Do I "need" some fancy certificates framed and hung on the wall
or a federally-authorized operator license station callsign so that
I can put that next to my name (as if it were a PhD or similar)?
No. I have no use for Titles and the only thing on my home office
wall is paint. [one 13-foot long wall is mostly bookshelves which
are fairly well filled] One of the LAST things I need is some
certificate announcing "expertise" in a manual skill that was
already mature before the turn of the century befoe the latest
one. My wife has two post-graduate degrees which makes her
two up on mine, yet neither one of us makes a big thing of a
college diploma. [hers are in storage up north, for example]

Some who are skilled in an archaic form of "communications"
keep up the pretense of their being "superior" to others. That's
just a pretense fueled by an ego...and worse considering that
the old license class standards were set by even older egos
brought about when such OOK CW standards were a norm
in old radio communications. That time is past but the old
standards are still triumphed by those who've gotten enormous
emotional sustenance from the Titles they thus obtained.
I'm not about to give up my time to feed those egos nor agree
to maintain the federal welfare that kept those egos fed.

Modernization in ALL communications standards and
practices has been happening...and the hobby of amateur
radio has lagged behind the rest of the radio world. There's
finally some hope of ending the federal welfare of egos
who think that OOK CW is the end-all, be-all of radio and
thus some sort of God-given "superiority" over mere
mortals. I am secure in what I know and do, do not need
fancy titles or certificates or awards to stoke my ego. If
something new happens in electronics I take the trouble
to find out more about it, to continue a lifelong learning
endeavor that is itself most fascinating. I don't bother with
trying to be a "champion" of some skill that was already
old when I was born and see little use for such skill now.

Now, all that said, amateur radio MIGHT be a fun thing for
me to do, something to ADD to the many means of
communication I already have. I first communicated on
radio over a half century ago and have since done so
from ground, from the air (at the controls of an airplane),
and from the sea (okay, a harbor on the Pacific shore).
I once sent commands to a station ON the moon and
received a reply that such commands were accepted.
I don't need a radio or a hobby license just to show that
I can use a radio or communicate by radio...nor do I need
a lot of wallpaper to "prove" such communications. I'm
one of the very few in here who has the technological
smarts and experience to be able to cobble together
a "radio" from an amorphous collection of components,
often cited as the "reason" simple comms such as CW
"is needed for its simplicity." I don't bother trying that
since it is much better to design-build something better,
something more state-of-the-art than the pipe-dream
stuff spouted in this newsgroup in the past by morse
mavens.

My advocacy in here has been to end the morse code test
for an amateur radio license. It has never been one of
getting my own amateur license. Given that I've read just
about all the propaganda issued by the ARRL on their
idea of What Is Best For Amateurs, I'm rather immune to
their "reasons." If you have some NEW reasons to get
an amateur radio license, I'll listen. Old reasons haven't
worked so far.