On Sun, 13 Jul 2003 13:26:00 GMT, Dick Carroll
wrote:

Just as I would have skipped learning the code if it hadn't been a
licensing
requirement, too.

Is that a chink in Dick's armor? Quick, Jose, my soldering iron!

So much for your advocacy of morse to new hams.
You made my point.

Bill you have been quite consistant about missing the entire point. When there is no
code test most hams won't learn Morse code.

I can't substantiate this statistically off the top of my head, but it
wouldn't surprise me to learn that a majority of hams already aren't
all that proficient with Morse to begin with. I was forced to learn it
to upgrade from Tech to General, but I learned it only well enough to
pass the test (by correctly copying the phrase "My QTH is Malibu,
California." rather than by answering the multiple choice questions -
since the comma and period count as two characters each, that gave me
one minute of solid copy), and basically haven't used it since.

I did try once...used the club station, went down in the lower portion
of 15 where I frequently hear some slower CW ops...send "CQ CQ CQ DE"
and my callsign twice, at about 5 WPM because I didn't want to send
faster than I could copy...then realized that in the amount of time it
took me to do that I could have already had a contact in the log on
phone...and that I did not and do not have the patience for CW.

I'd have a hard time believing there aren't a heck of a lot of 5 WPM
Generals and Extras out there who've gone through the same thing. Add
those to the no-code Techs and you might well be pretty close to half
the entire ham population in the U.S. for all I know.

I know that taxes you not a bit, so that means that you don't care whether
or not hams will be losing it as a viable mode.

Now it is you who might be missing the point. The code test will be
gone - as someone else in this NG likes to say, the government life
support system will be turned off. That, in and of itself, does not
guarantee that ham radio will lose CW as a viable mode, it only
guarantees that if the ARS is to keep CW as a viable mode, it behooves
those who want it to continue as such to find another way to get hams
to learn the code.

Now, to repeat the point I have been trying to make in this thread. On
the one hand we have guys like Arnie who will respect a fellow ham as
a fellow ham, regardless of whether that ham can do 50 WPM or
zero...will encourage people to learn the code and use the mode, bend
over backwards to help them do it, slow down his own sending so they
can copy it at their own speed, and just generally being reasonable
and friendly and giving people every encouragement.

On the other hand, we have guys snarling like angry dogs at people for
doing what you yourself would have done if you'd had the choice at the
time...people calling guys lazy, good for nothing, saying they aren't
"real" hams, and just generally being unreasonable, unfriendly, and in
some cases hypocritical as well.

Caught in the middle will be a whole generation of new hams who will
decide for themselves if they want to learn the code or not, sitting
there on the fence between the folks continuing the CW tradition in
ham radio and the folks who want nothing to do with Morse. The folks
on the no-code side will welcome them into the hobby regardless. The
folks on the other side...well...it looks good over where Arnie is,
but with all those snarling dogs over there, I dunno...

What I guess I'm trying to say is, we need less snarling dogs and more
people looking for a reasonable approach to the problem.

Which shows how shortsighted you are, right along with the rest of NCI.
And yes, FCC too. Of course they have far bigger fish to fry than to worry
about a trivial detail involving the ARS.

First of all, if it's so trivial, why is everybody getting their
panties in a bunch about it?

Secondly, I think the ARS itself has bigger fish to fry. To name just
one, BPL used to mean Brass Pounders' League. Now it means the noise
floor on your HF rig is about to go through the ceiling and put your
S-meter into orbit.

The least time they must spend on ARS issues the better for them,
whatever the end result.

Can't say as I really blame them. Everybody wants to be the fire
department in a town with no fires. Aside from the political
appointees, FCC is men and women who get up in the morning, go to
work, then go home at the end of the day, same as I do. I do what I
can to make my job easier, what makes them any different? So, FCC is
not going to solve the problem for us. Care to hazard a WAG as to
who's left to come up with a solution?

73 DE John, KC2HMZ