In article , Alun
writes:

(Brian Kelly) wrote in
. com:

"Joe Guthart" wrote in message
...
What's going on here ... the talk of restructuring to remove morse
code requirements has been going on for over 18 months. Many, many
countries have already removed the morse code requirement to gain
access to HF.

Kindly note that "other countries" don't generally lead the U.S.
around by it's nose. The U.S. seldom blindly buys into "many many
foreign goverments'"internal policies. We ain't EU/UN sheep. Take your
pick.

Sure
there's been a lot of backlash from those who still want to keep code
alive.

It's not a "backlash", a very large precentage of the U.S. ham
population favors the retention of the code test. The FCC is quite
aware of this divide within the hobby and as a result continues to let
the matter cook on one of their sub-basement back burners until they
manage to get back to the matter. Typical bush-league bureaucratic
work and aggravation avoidance ploy. Keeps their inbox flak & spam
levels down.

I know this is the government, but, what is taking so long?

Because the public has no vested interest at all in whether the ham
code test goes away or not. The FCC has *much* bigger fish to fry with
it's scarce resources. For instance the public needs the FCC to focus
it's assets on dramatically reshuffling the whole upper RF spectrum to
accomodate wireless broadband access to the Internet far more than the
public needs the FCC to diddle with rules changes which allow more
codeless hobbyists access to the HF ham bands.

Can't they come
to some decision quickly.

Joesph did you just get off the boat at Ellis Island Joe??

Anyone have a proposed timeline of when this will be settled.

Nice troll Joe. At least in on-topic for once.

w3rv


That's not a troll

Alun, Kelly's remarks are "civil discourse" of PCTA extras. :-)

As a sidelight, Ellis Island has been closed for immigration
purposes for years. My mother and her family came through
there in 1924, my father and his brother through there in 1928.
Both parents became naturalized U.S. citizens later.

Apparently the "Kelly" surname is native to North America,
judging by the tenor of the "civil discourse." :-)

[this is beginning to sound like the PCTA are a branch of
the DAR...:-) ]