From: "Alun L. Palmer" on Sun, Feb 27 2005 3:17 am
wrote in news:1109453914.521433.288070
:
From: "Alun L. Palmer" on Sat, Feb 26 2005 6:48 pm
Buck wrote in
:
On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 04:11:18 GMT, robert casey

wrote:

get Elemnt 1 abolished without going through this whole NPRM cycle.
We
all know what happened to that idea. BTW, where is Carl anyway?

Carl Stevenson has been very busy working with the IEEE 802
groups on wireless standards (among other things).

Please fill us in, Alun, what happened with that NPRM cycle?
Last I saw, NO NPRM had been released yet concerning test
element 1. The only one released was a general "housekeeping"
update of amateur radio regulations.

That's the thing, we are in that cycle, but still waiting for the NPRM
to
be issued. NCI hoped to short circuit this process, but failed.

NCI cannot have "failed" an NPRM that hasn't been released yet.

Actually it's been going on for at least 82 years that I know of,
but
WTH!

That would be since 1913.

Actually, both of us have the maths wrong. I meant 1927, but that's
only 78
years. 1913 would be 92 years. 1927 was the year that the ITU made the

international requirement for the code test.

The first U.S. radio regulating agency came into being in 1912.
There's been a small controvery in here about the first code
test for amateurs in here, others saying the code test began
a year after that agency was created.

2003 is the year in which the ITU revised most of S25, eliminating
the artificial requirement of morsemanship for an amateur radio
license having below-30-MHz privileges. That's a 76-year span
from 1927. Radio as a communications medium is only 108 years
old.

I don't think so. In 1913 amateur
radio was ALL about morse code. ARRL had its "president for
life" (H.P.Maxim) set to go but wasn't fully formed yet as an
actual local New England amateur radio club organization.
[ARRL was incorporated in 1914, two years after the first
U.S. radio regulating agency was created]

Not so. Not in 1927 anyway. There were a lot of people using phone
back
then. AM, of course.

In 1912, between 1909 (when the Radio Club of America started)
and 1912, morse code was about the ONLY way to communicate
on early radio. ARRL wasn't formed until 1914...as a local New
England radio club of 3 members...with Maxim as the leader who
thought it a neat idea to (virtually) "hack" the commercial telegram
services using their spark radios. :-)

In 1912 NOBODY was using the Reggie Fessenden AM system
of putting microphones in series with the antenna lead-in. :-)

I won't argue the CCITT "arguments" back in 1927. As you said,
the USA already had a morse code test then. The ARRL was
already 13 years old and on the ascendency, although NOT yet
the big "leader" in national amateur representation. Not yet
despite Maxim Going To Washington (!) to "restore ham radio"
from its WW1 shut-down. The Thomas H. White early USA
radio regulation history on the web has all of the early gory
details on that, several items the ARRL won't repeat about
themselves.

The various ITU conferences gradually rolled back the code requirement
to
below 1GHz in 1937, 420MHz in 1947, 144MHz in 1967, 30MHz in 1979 and
0 MHz
in 2003. Australia introduced a no code licence in 1952, the UK in
1963 and
the US not until 1991, after many other countries had done so. The FCC
did
attempt to promote a no-code licence in the 1970s, but gave up when
opposed
by the ARRL (yes, I do have that the right way around!).

I'm familiar with what the ARRL did on lobbying the FCC to make
the regulations "their way." :-)

Problem is, lots of League "Believers" get outraged whenever
someone points out their clay feet.

About 20 countries have removed the code test since 2003. Japan
already for
many years had HF for all licences including the no code 10 Watt 4th
class
licence, and Spain once in the past abolished the code test, but
brought it
back when their hams couldn't get reciprocal licences elsewhere.

Even in the US I know for a fact that the contoversy was very much
alive in
the '70s. But 1927 was the year it really began.

The turn-down of a no-code license by the FCC in the 1970s
pretty much quashed my interest in U.S. amateur radio (along
with thousands of others). The first personal computer kits of
1975-1976 steered my interests away from radio (also done
by thousands of others). That was the blazing of a new path
leading to the future, not the recreation of what others have done
in copying the pioneers of the airwaves back in the past.

1927 may have been the international year of controversy but
in the USA the code test has been there since the first U.S.
radio regulating agency...92 years of the 108-year-old
existance of radio.

Funny thing isn't it, ye olde tymmers in a relatively high tech hobby?
It's
a good thing spark isn't still legal!

If so, the ham magazines would have ads for computer controlled,
software-defined SPARK transceivers! :-) The olde-tymers
would be bragging up a storm of arcs and sparks, using knife
switches and using point-to-point wiring (all with flexible coils on
them) with polished woodcraft bases gleaming in candlelight.

If you check out the ARRL website you will see that QST is
starting a "new feature" of explaining what all those knobs on
the front panels are doing to the readership. Good grief, what
is a "high tech hobby" coming to?!?!?

It apparently has boiled down to the League's editors that most
of their membership are a bunch of technical ignorants who
never learned anything beyond being whoopee-wonderful
morsemen. Rather disgusting when they make like "superior"
beings because they passed a high-rate morse test once.

Wow, an extra license that even a 9-year-old can pass! Lots
of "incentive" to "join the amateur brotherhood" by learning
morse code (and be just like a 9-year-old).

It's worse when some insufferable, self-righteous "mama"
wants to "discipline children as parents do" in here.