On 1 Jan 2006 19:59:18 -0800, wrote:

From: an Old friend on Jan 1, 5:35 pm

wrote:
From: an_old_friend on Jan 1, 2:42 pm
wrote:
From: on Sat, Dec 31 2005 3:29 pm
wrote:
From: on Dec 30, 5:56 pm
wrote:


I disagree but only slightly. Don't forget that the ARRL
officers ARE the olde-tymers of morse code. Naturally they
would pressure for more privileges in what they liked or
could do best.

well my aphasia grabed the keyboard let me think i like pander to
people LIKE jim oh well

No problem to me in understanding you, Mark. :-)

but to your they are not the oT themselves they are the Young Men of
that group (in their 50's and 60's very much like the Comunist party in
the USSR near the end

Ahem...that's a bit drastic in comparison, but unfortunately apt.

shrug

agreed the states involed in choosing your allies and enemies unwisely
were Much higher in that Now defunct body but the operationing
mechiansisms show striking comparisions



I am reamain unconvined of this "need" after all if the rules said you
must qsy if you encouter govt sent morse with no code testing at all
since you could just qsy if you heard any morse at all

When it was the ONLY mode possible in radio, it made sense.

yep then it did but just when did that stop being the case?

WW I? I think

Morse code testing was in Judgement a very helpful tool of regulation
but we could have done without it if had wanted to

Not TECHNICALLY. The first "radio transmitters" used by hams
were the Spark jobbies. Easy enough to construct at the time
of the first U.S. radio regulating agency created in 1912.
A Spark transmitter - of the ham variety - could ONLY be
turned on or off. Since that was the way the landline
telegraph worked, morse code was adapted for radio.

There weren't many other ways to communicate with those
technically primitive "radios." ANY on-off code scheme
would have worked. "Morse" happened to be a then-mature
way to go so that was it.

I doubt that any ham in 1906 tried putting a "high-power"
carbon microphone in series with their antenna lead a la
Reggie Fessenden...even after Fessenden proved it could be
done. [no other AM broadcaster tried it for broadcasting
service...har!]

The vacuum tube was needed for "clean" CW generation. Once
those were more perfected, damped wave oscillation ("spark")
was declared forbidden for use. Rightly so since it took up
many, many Kilocycles of bandwidth that only a galena
crystal receiver could love. :-)

MAYBE the code test could have been dropped from amateur radio
licensing in 1934 when the FCC was created. Personally, I don't
think so from the political situation brewing in radio and all
of "electronic" communications through USA membership in the
CCITT. [the CCITT morphed into the ITU once the UN was born]

about is where I eean then it could alothough it was very conveint
still in those days


By 1960 the vast majority of message traffic around the world
was being done by TTY. [yes, Hans, the USN DID use morse on
ships] MAYBE the time was ripe then for a code-test-free
license. No, said the olde-tymers of that time, they were
(now generally retired) champions of morsemanship and weren't
about to let go. They "knew what was best for (their) ham
radio!"

By 1970 the code-test-free license was an even greater
possibility. Offshore-designed/built radios were showing up
on the ham market and the VHF-and-up HT was a practical piece
of radio goods. The olde-tyme morsemen were still adamant
and getting more stern. NO #$%^!!! code-test-free license
for ham radio, no sir! :-)

By 1980 the code-test-free license now had supporters, even a
few of the clearer-thinking olde-tyme morsemen (!)...but there
were many against this (shocking) revolution. That didn't come
to pass until 1990 and FCC 90-53...which resulted in the no-
code-test Tech class beginning in 1991.

The 1990s had the steamroller of streamlining going faster
and faster...and the result being, of course, recent history
in amateur regulations.



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From: on Jan 2, 12:36 pm

On 1 Jan 2006 19:59:18 -0800, wrote:
From: an Old friend on Jan 1, 5:35 pm
wrote:
From: an_old_friend on Jan 1, 2:42 pm
wrote:
From: on Sat, Dec 31 2005 3:29 pm
wrote:
From: on Dec 30, 5:56 pm
wrote:


but to your they are not the oT themselves they are the Young Men of
that group (in their 50's and 60's very much like the Comunist party in
the USSR near the end

Ahem...that's a bit drastic in comparison, but unfortunately apt.

shrug

agreed the states involed in choosing your allies and enemies unwisely
were Much higher in that Now defunct body but the operationing
mechiansisms show striking comparisions

To me it is just the "power" thing. As in the old folk axiom:

"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Power and control are emotional narcotics. It's difficult
to go "cold turkey" after having them and the rationales
for continuing on the power trip are many and varied. That's
what many see the league being guilty of in the past four
decades.


I am reamain unconvined of this "need" after all if the rules said you
must qsy if you encouter govt sent morse with no code testing at all
since you could just qsy if you heard any morse at all

When it was the ONLY mode possible in radio, it made sense.

yep then it did but just when did that stop being the case?

WW I? I think

I think some time close to 1960, coincident with the start of
the solid-state era and the digital circuitry yet to appear
en masse in the electronic component marketplace.

While the late 40s and all of the 50s saw the rise of TV and
the mobile two-way radios (neither of which using "CW"), the
compact, power-economic transistor and IC circuitry led to a
number of radio improvements: Frequency synthesis to any
desired frequency with quartz crystal stability; true adoption
of existing SSB techniques in much smaller packages; FM and PM
as practical modulation modes in less-bulky radios; the
keyboard-graphical user interface for all kinds of data modes;
improved modems employing Information Theory for minimum
spectral content yet maximizing data throughput.

WW2 radios proved - absolutely - the value of FM for
portable and mobile voice two-way radios. Even though
those used tube architecture, newer and better design
efforts led to rather compact designs. A case in point
is the SCR-300 backpack VHF "walkie-talkie" having 18
tubes and weighing only 40 pounds with the big battery.
The AN/PRC-8 family follow-on cut the weight and bulk
in half just a decade later, even though they also used
tubes (subminiature variety). In yet another decade, the
AN/PRC-25 appeared with easy channel selection (crystal
controlled), all solid-state except for the final
amplifier (a tube). The AN/PRC-77 was a totally-solid-
state version of the PRC-25, taking less than a decade
after the first appearance of its older brother. In the
civilian/commercial world, the handheld FM voice
transceiver was becoming the radio of choice once the
solid-state devices were available to designers.

Teletype Corporation's teleprinters had proved
indispensible in written messaging communications just
prior to and during WW2. A written copy at each comm
circuit end, identical, no specialized operator training
needed to run one of those. While cost was a factor in
slowness to adopt those for civilian/commercial uses,
the first of the "dumb" terminals (with attached
printers) would supplant those wonderful old electro-
mechanical beasties. Solid-state circuitry made the
"dumb" terminal possible...and the control of the
peripheral paper printer.

SSB for voice radios became a practical reality in the 60s
and took over "the bands" (HF) for relatively narrow AM
SSB, aided first by mechanical or crystal bandpass filters,
then the Gingell Polyphase network (after the 70s).

MAYBE the code test could have been dropped from amateur radio
licensing in 1934 when the FCC was created. Personally, I don't
think so from the political situation brewing in radio and all
of "electronic" communications through USA membership in the
CCITT. [the CCITT morphed into the ITU once the UN was born]

about is where I eean then it could alothough it was very conveint
still in those days

You have to realize that there is a terrible INERTIA in some
"regulatory" circles (standardization rather than legislative
coding of regulations). Newer concepts are difficult for
many to accept, those wishing to retain modes and methods
that they finally learned to understand.

In 1934, "radio" was only 38 years old. It had gone through
the beginning arc-spark era, through the KW VLF alternator
era, and suddenly thrust into "modern" radio using vacuum
tubes. Receivers were now sensitive, first through the
regenerative variety, then the superheterodyne (invented just
16 years prior). Many, many, Many NEW things had appeared in
radio in just a generation and a half of human existance.
That was difficult for many amateur radio hobbyists to keep
up with back then. On-off keying morse code was already a
mature mode in 1896, well-known (through telegraphy), and
therefore something the standardizers and regulators could
understand.

All the way up to 1941, the most conventional way to transmit
voice on radio was through AM and "plate modulation" of the
final amplifier. That meant an extra audio amplifier having
a power output (at AF) at least half that of the RF final
amplifier. Bulky, costly, and a power-hog, it was restricted
to broadcasters for the most part. Use of FM tossed out that
big AF power amplifier for modulation and assured a constant
signal level in the useful dynamic range of the receiver.
Even though Ed Armstrong had PROVED the efficacy of FM prior
to WW2, the INERTIA of the powers-that-be kept it from being
commonplace. The needs of WW2 tossed aside a lot of the
old inertia about modes and methods in radio.

Some relative "youngsters" question "why couldn't we have had
SSB sooner than 1960?" That's more complicated. The Telcos
were ALREADY using SSB techniques in frequency-multiplexing
many telephone voice channels into one pair of long-distance
wires in the 1920s. That was wire-line telephone use and "not
radio" (as it was known then). But, the Telco subsidiaries
were adapting this new multi-channel "carrier" equipment to go
on RF and did so in the 1930s. The Dutch were the first to
put HF SSB multi-channel into service, Hilversum to the
Netherlands Antilles. Worked just dandy and many other radio
communications providers used the same sort of system. That
became standardized (through use) as having four voice
bandwidth channels, usually with two of the voice bandwidth
channels further frequency-multiplexed to carry about 8 TTY
circuits. Heckuva good spectral economy in only 12 KHz of
bandspace. But, that was TELEPHONE techniques and "not radio
as 'everyone' knew it." It didn't really occur to radio folks
that SINGLE-CHANNEL SSB might be useful until after WW2 and
then to the Army Air Corps (prior to becoming the USAF in
1948) for their long-distance bomber fleet. While "the SSB
story" is awash in myths and legends of its 'development,'
single-channel SSB AM became the de facto voice mode on HF
for MANY different HF radio users, not just amateurs. The
WHY of not having single-channel SSB radios for 20 years
after the first HF SSB appeared is what I put down to
INERTIA in thinking, inability to grasp the obvious.

If you wish to see "inertia" in thinking in the amateur
radio area, just read about a decade's worth of ham
magazines of the 50s and 60s, especially the "letters to the
editor" sections. Hams of that time were FIXED in certain
concepts (finals HAD to be Class C, could not be "linear"
due to "efficiency"), that one MUST have a humongous AF
plate modulator to create AM, and "CW gets through when
nothing else will" mythos. Many hams just refused to try
understanding "phasing" modulation in creating AM...it HAD
to be done by moving the Class C final's plate supply "up
and down" just like the classic RF envelope depiction of
AM in all the textbooks. :-) [the basic math behind
AM, FM, and PM modulation had been worked out by 1915 and
still holds true today]

If - and only if - the rest of the radio world had NOT
been advancing in technology, radio amateurs MIGHT still
claim justification for retaining the manual code test.
Turning an RF carrier on-off is a very simple concept,
easy for anyone to understand. All the other modes take
some head-scratching to grasp how it is done. Inertia
in learning is safe, easy, a survival tactic...and it
improves self-esteem of the "operators." :-)