"Dwight Stewart" wrote in message thlink.net...
"WA8ULX" wrote:
No-Coders have whinned about being forced to learn
CW to use HF. Now we have BPL come along, which
will provide MILLIONS of people use of HF without
taking a CW test. (snip)


Isn't it amazing how unaware you are?

Dwight, given Bruce's many posts here over the past few years, I cease
to be amazed by anything he writes. Occasionally I am amazed at my
ability to decode what he has written....

Millions of people with no CW/code
skills have been using HF for decades. Of course, none of them (CB'ers) are
members of the licensed ham radio community.

Are they the model we hams should follow, or should we take them as a
cautionary tale of what could happen to us?

This is not a trivial question. FCC created 27 MHz cb for a definite
purpose, but they quickly lost control of it to the point. The FCC of
1958 could not imagine that people would just ignore the rules to the
point that enforcement of said rules became impossible.

Why did rule-breaking on 27 MHz become the norm rather than the
exception?

Instead, a couple hundred
thousand Technicians did the right thing and "earned" a license

Why the quotes around "earned"? Anyone with a valid amateur radio
license earned it. (Licenses issued as a result of cheating are not
valid, of course, and FCC will invalidate them if sufficient evidence
of cheating is presented).

to join the
ARS, all without being offered even the basic HF operating privileges of an
unlicensed CB'er.

Let's see.....cb user gets a couple of watts on 40/80 channels and two
modes (SSB and AM). Tech gets up to 1500 watts on every amateur band
above 30 MHz, if you just count the most commonly used modes (CW, FM,
SSB, AM, RTTY, packet, APRS, SSTV, FSTV, PSK-31, DSSS, FHSS, more TOR
modes than I can recall, fax, data,.....

Also satellites, repeaters, remote control, remote bases, and a bunch
of other stuff.

Plus almost any new mode or technology that a ham can dream up,
implement and document to the FCC.

Now which is the better deal?

73 de Jim, N2EY