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From: "bb" on Tues,Apr 19 2005 6:06 pm
wrote: From: "cl" on Sun,Apr 17 2005 11:33 pm Eh - I had the code down in 2 weeks for the Novice exam. AND I'm now an Extra. Been licensed since the early 80s. Yeah, I probably could have learned it in under a week, if I pushed myself. Most anyone will tell you - it isn't good to do such. Sorry, according to many in here you have to approach it as THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IN YOUR LIFE!!! :-) I've heard that, too. Everybody wants to be Coach!! [I rode First Class...] Besides, at that time, I was chasing rug rats - so study time was premium. Excuses, excuses, excuses! :-) I've heard that, too. Perhaps there was a lack of a medical certificate presented to the VEs at the test showing a sufficient sperm count to demonstrate "manhood." :-) Most recommendations are 15 minutes to a half hour a day. That hardly makes it possible in a week. I used the words " "AT LEAST" 2 WEEKS". Some are faster learners than others, that is a given. BUT my point was, you have to get started to learn ANYTHING. You can't absorb it through osmosis. Back to the timing thing, I hope someone from the military can step in to tell us how much time they were given to get the code down. I think they had to "Cram". "Caveat," I was in the military, the United States Army, voluntary enlistment beginning 13 March 1952. Went from Basic to Signal School at Fort Monmouth, NJ. Amount of Signal School time spent on morse code? ZERO! NO class, NO "cramming." That can't be right. Why there's a war museum in Canada that has a code key... Hi, hi! Mythology seems to be graven in stone images for some of the morsemen zealots. At that time the ONLY military occupation specialty in the Army requiring morsemanship was Field Radio. Just like Field Day, I'll bet. A picnic in da park it wasn't. Big HUT on the bed of a deuce and a half, towing a PE-95 motor generator on a trailer. Enough poles and wire under the single operator bench (a low cabinet with "cushions" on it) to make a small wire rhombic antenna. Smelly Model 19 TTY clattering away on the bench-desk and the venerable BC-610 400 Watt transmitter near the door. A couple fans to "cool" everything so it was miserable in the heat of summer and uncomformtable in winter. "5-packs" of canned/dry rations instead of hot dogs and soda. Nobody "kept score" in any competition...other than the competition of not being destroyed (literally) by any enemy. Field Radio circa 1950s, USA. Field Radio then required passing 20 WPM, was taught at Camp Gordon (later Fort Gordon, now the home of the Signal Corps). Fort Gordon? Where was Fort Farnsworth? Next to Camp Fessenden. Drop-out rate was roughly a quarter of all starting...that I know about. Those that didn't make it, but had some apitude for electronics, got to go to Inside Plant Telephone, Outside Plant Telephone, Carrier, Teleprinter Operator, Field Wireman...or the Infantry. :-) "Incoming!" Well, infantry is better than adultery... My Signal School classes taught Microwave Radio Relay (at a time when there was little of such operational). Radar was also taught at Fort Monmouth, had the same basic electronics as Microwave. I got assigned to a Fixed Station Transmitter site in Japan. Got all of about a day's worth of on-site "training" to operate one of three dozen HF transmitters having a minimum of 1 KW output. NO MORSEMANSHIP NEEDED THERE. Not even to open and close circuits? Nah...we were a close bunch but always open for suggestion. NO MORSE USED at the third-largest station in the Army Command and Administrative Network. That's when the US Army started it's downward slide and people now have to go to Canadian war museums to get "thier" morse code fixes. I know. The "shame" of it all... Probably the same age bracket as me. I do listen to call signs now and then on the scanner to pick out the services they represent - if I don't immediately know who the service is. I do listen some times to code on the H.F. Bands. ...or what you think is morse. :-) There's very LITTLE morse code on HF nowadays...EXCEPT inside the ham bands. With the RF Gain on maximum and AGC disabled, BFO on, one will eventually start "hearing morse code" on "the bands." :-) The discordant thrumming-whistling of old commercial muliti- channel SSB is less now than it was a quarter century ago. All kinds of OTHER weird sounds ARE there, but those are various forms of data that very few hams use (or can use) and ON HF but NOT in the ham bands. Once in a rare while one might catch an ALE burst from one of the 2500 gubmint radios of SHARES. There are many things you learn in life and may never use again, unless you plan to play on Jeopardy. Tell that to Ken Jennings! :-) That guy could probably copy psk31. He's a machine. Nah. He's just an ordinary programmer, a regular young guy, a Mormon. He just happens to have gunfighter reflexes in his brain...and about $2.5 million extra now. :-) Jeopardy is now coming up on the FINALS in a sort of mental championship on ABC-TV. Fun programming to watch...and try to match wits with the various contestants and their amazing memories. My wife and I are regular viewers after supper...with a bit of friendly competition between us and the contestants. Meanwhile, the cardinals are gathering in Newington to elect a new poop to lead the morsemen into the righteous path of the true hamreligion...via the "history" of radio as only they have sterilized it. |
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