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Yep... that is pretty much the mantra... you hear it around 60+ year old
guys who don't realize they already are at the end of the line when it comes of being of importance to the hobby--so, being a vindictive lot, and in denial, now attempt to block the younger innovative hams with a current knowledge and education which they feel are a threat.... I all ready know all that, although my words don't spell it out so a person deep in the disease of Alzheimer's can understand, I have chalked the wall... .... somehow when you say "cleaned up the airwaves", I hear more "created a good ole buddies club of senior citizens".... grin John "KØHB" wrote in message . net... "John Smith" wrote As I look at it, hams are all a bunch which want to destroy the hobby and watch it die as freqs are stripped away and their numbers become too small to be of interest to anyone, let alone the FCC... they would ONLY do this if they wanted the hobby to die--but for some strange reason--wish to claim otherwise!!! ... go figure... -- THE LAST HAM -- It was a warm sunny day, with just a slight breeze. Joe squinted at the top of his tower, admiring the five-element 20 meter monobander he had built the previous winter. It was an imposing sight, yet had never been used. Joe was the last ham. Joe never intended to be the last ham, but it worked out that way. He thought back to how it had all started in the 80's when the FCC created the no-code Tech license. Joe considered that action the biggest blunder any government agency had ever perpetrated on the citizens of the United States of America. "Just think of it," Joe had remarked, "an amateur radio license with no Morse code requirements! It will mean ruin for us all!" Joe ignored the fact that the no-code license brought new blood into the hobby after the amateur ranks had been shrinking for many years. He refused to notice that after the FCC created this new license category, the number of active hams increased at a dizzying rate. Joe hated no-code hams. He wouldn't accept the no-code license as just another way of entering Amateur ranks, and refused to acknowledge that many no-coders upgrade to higher- class licenses. No explanation was good enough for Joe. Joe and some like-minded cronies hung out on the local repeater, where they expounded at length their belief that the new hams are somehow less than human. They even suggested that the way to clean up the ham bands was to get rid of all 2-by-3 calls. They joked that everyone ought to own a no-code Tech. When new operators dared talk to Joe or his buddies, they found themselves humbled, scolded, and scorned. In his zeal to control "his" airwaves, Joe monitored the local repeater with a stop-watch, to make sure interlopers "ID'ed" on time. If they went a little over, he gave them a tongue-lashing. He even harassed them when they operated perfectly, just to make sure they knew they weren't welcome. Of course, Joe never gave his callsign when he did this. He regarded himself not as a jammer, but as a radio cop -- keeping the ham bands pure. Soon others joined Joe's cause. After all, "The new no-coders made two meters sound like CB!" Slowly at first, then at a faster and faster rate, newcomers dropped out of the local clubs, then off the air completely. Joe was ecstatic. It was working; he was saving the airwaves. The number of active hams dropped to far fewer than when he started. He figured only the "real hams" were left, so he didn't mind when the Callbook shrunk to the size of a comic book. But with so few hams, the political power of Amateur Radio diminished. Soon ham spectrum shrunk, too. That didn't bother Joe; he cared only about 2 and 20 meters. He thought it was funny when the FCC auctioned many VHF and UHF bands, "those no-coder hangouts," to commercial interests. Finally, citing "no further need for an Amateur license category," the FCC stopped issuing new licenses. Before long, Joe and his buddies were the only hams left. But that was fine. After all, they all got their licenses back when hams took tests at FCC offices, and not at one of those VEC jokes that allowed an applicant to take a test here or there. Joe and his cronies spent long hours ragchewing on 20, bragging about how good things were. Occasionally they paused, but only to note when one of their clan became a "silent key." Then, one day, Joe called CQ on twenty meters and got no reply. He tried again the next day with the same result. He kept trying for a week, but no one ever came back to him. Finally, he called one of his friends on the twisted pair, to set up a contact. But, an elderly-sounding lady informed him that his friend was no longer among the living. Joe paged through his old, dog-eared Callbook. But he couldn't find a single listing of anyone he had worked recently. That's when he realized he was the only one left. Joe had just started back toward the house when he suddenly tired. He at down to rest on the grass. He felt a squeezing pain in his chest, and his left arm ached. He lay back. His antenna, and clouds drifting by above it, were the last things he saw. But Joe and his like-minded friends had lived long enough to accomplish their goal; THEY HAD CLEANED UP THE AIRWAVES! |
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