In article , Leo
writes:

Very well said, Dee - anything is possible if you want to do it badly
enough..

Yeah, riiiiiight, "Leo." :-)

Want to be a world-reknowned theoretical astrophysicist? No problem,
just contract some bad neural disease, go to an ivy-covered UK college
and write a few books. All you have to do is WILL yourself...for about
3 millenia. By that time, astrophysics will have become "easy" for you.

Want to be a famous artist and be featured in national magazines even
though you don't have have any art talent at all? No problem. WILL
yourself to draw/paint, spend hours at it...but hire a very good publicist
so you can become a "Grandpa Moses." [we've already had a Grandma]

I am certainly no prodigy at morse, electronics, martial
arts, cooking, business management or anything else - but I have
always been able to accomplish the things that I was motivated to do.

...or conveniently FORGET those things you were not able to do...

Mind you, it took me until I was 45 to become motivated enough to
learn morse code - but I wanted to get on HF, focused on the goal,
bought some training software online and passed the 5 wpm test four
weeks later.

Oh, my. At age 20 I was ALREADY ON HF...and on VHF, on UHF,
on microwaves in Big Time communications before reaching 24...all
without any sort of morsemanship.

At age 26 I thought it might be a fun thing to learn morse code and
get a ham license to augment my First Phone license passed in '56.
Wasn't WORTH it to listen to all that beeping. I'd already done three
years of communications in the US Army, all of it trans-Pacific, all
without using or having to know morse code.

Doesn't make sense to me that, in this new millennium, AMATEURS
still DEMAND that everyone know morse in order to get a HAM license.

Conversely, I have wanted to learn to play the guitar
since I was a teenager - not sufficiently enough, though, as I never
did do it. Which, in retrospect, is probably a good thing....

What?!? NO MOTIVATION!?! Terrible!

Can't you even do simple chords on a git-box?

I never had that problem. Next door neighbor was a part-time guitarist.
Designed and built a portable amplifier to fit inside his guitar. Not a big
boom-box with 5 KW of acoustic power...was way back in '63 when
guitars were first getting popular. Design from scratch was no problem
for me, nor the hardware. I liked drums better.

Talent has very little to do with accomplishment (it does relate to
the level of excellence that one can attain, but to become reasonably
proficient in anything talent is not a factor), especially in ventures
based primarily on rote repetition like morse, Karate, or learning a
language.

HAH!!!!

I happen to have a talent for languages and have the physical equipment
to speak with very little "English" dialect. I know others MORE literate
(through formal schooling) in the same language as I know but have
atrocious accents and can't always form written sentences in that
language. They can spend decades of such study and will never get it
down properly. Not a problem for me.

I just don't see any sense in maintaining a federal morse code test in
this day and age for a HOBBY activity. I've been doing REAL HF
comm long before nearly all of these old-timer morsemen without
needing any HOBBY code test.


Blaming a lack of talent for failure to accomplish something reflects
on a persons' own inability to accept responsibility for their own
actions - successful people, quite simply, go out and get what they
want. Or, in the words of Albert Gray:

Yes, WANT violin playing ability on par with Itzak Perlman badly
enough and it can be done?

WANT to be a baseball great like the Mariner's John Olerud and it
can be done just by determination and practice?

"Will and idea" (and determination) is all that is necessary?

I don't think so.

The existance of the morse code test for an AMATEUR radio license
is NOT some moral bull**** thing of "will and determination." There's
NO divine idea that the morse code test must always be. AMATEUR
radio is a hobby, not a Premium Life Accomplishment.

I think some of you have wigged-out too far and need investigation for
Illegal substance abuse...

LHA