Jeff Renkin wrote in message ...
In an emergency anyone is broadcasting to ANYONE that is listening. If you
think a ham or anyone else in an emergency is not going to want a non-ham to
help, or will refuse to deal with a non-ham you are crazy.

If I'm on a ham band calling for help, I don't expect non hams to be
listening.

Actually MORE people who are not hams could be listening with their scanners than hams
with their 2-meter radios. You just don't know they are there because they can't
talk back, but they are listening. Just like when the cops say things they
shouldn't on their radios because they think the only ones listening are the other
cops.

I'm not talking about 2 meters. If I'm close enough to use a repeater,
I'm probably just as close to a phone or able to hit a cell site with
my phone. Any emergency that I would use a radio to call for help will
likely be so far away from any civilization, 2 meters will be useless.
I know when I'm on the highway, 2 meters is useless most of the time.
Thats why I live on 40m in the day, and 75m at night when I'm on the
road. I like to actually be able to talk to people on a regular basis.
But just to ease your mind, I can work any band from 160m to 70cm when
mobile or portable.


If there are, well, so much the better, but I would never *expect* any
to be listening. If I get on a ham band, I'm transmitting to other
hams, and other hams only.

Even with that mindset, MOST hams don't understand morse code, especially those that
would be on 2-meters which would most likely the band you would use to call for help.

Where do you get this 2 meter mindset at? The chances of me ever using
2 meters to call for help is very remote at best. Also where do you
get these weird ideas about who and who doesn't know cw? Sure, many of
the no-coders on 2 meters don't know the code. But I wouldn't use 2
meters. It's obvious you must not know too many people on HF.

If I want a non ham, I would get on my cell
phone or yell real loud.

Ham or not, you would use the cellphone if you had one over any ham radio.

Maybe, maybe not. My cell phone is useless in many parts of the
country. IE: lets say I drive out to the Fort Davis area in west
Texas. Cell phones don't work worth a hoot there. But my radio sure
will. My radio works everywhere in the world on some particular band.
No cell site or repeater required.


In an emergency you can even use frequencies and radios at your access that you
would not normally be licensed to operate on. We are talking about
EMERGENCIES here. No time to waste playing morse code or taking the time to
pound out a cry for help one letter at a time in a mode that only ends up
sounding like silly beeps to most of the people listening on the other end that
would otherwise be hearing your cry for help.

B.S. Most hams on the HF bands know code well enough to get a simple
message through.

Most hams only learn the code to pass the test, then never use it after that.

So you say...Quite a few still use it after the test. Maybe you don't,
but you ain't everybody.

You
are also not going to be using an HF radio to call for help, you would use the 2-meter
radio.

You must be high. The HF radio is the only one I would ever be likely
to use. If I have to use a ham radio to call for help, I'm too far
away for 2m or my cell phone to be of any use. If I'm not far way, I
wouldn't use a radio to call for help. None of them.

God help you if you had to use the HF radio to get help!

What do you think the sailboat I mentioned was using? A 70 cm HT? We
were on 40m.
That is HF. Being they were well off the coast of Mexico out in the
Pacific, what would you suggest they use? Tin cans and a string?
Flipper, with a message in a bottle tied around his neck? Oh, I get
it. You would insist they waste their time and valuable battery power,
and uselessly holler for hours on end on 2 meters...:/ I'm starting to
think you are the troll...

Keep in mind
what frequencies and bands the police, fire and paramedics use, and why they don't use
HF for emergency radio use.

What do they have to do with anything we are talking about? I'm not
going to get on a radio and talk to the police or whoever directly.
They throw you in jail for that around here. And I don't care to hear
about any emergency clauses...I'm not getting on any public service
freq with my uncertified radio. I wouldn't trust the *******s any more
than I could throw them. I've seen people go to jail for that here in
Houston. One was a "in training" police officer who had a handheld
motorola sabre radio in his car. He didn't even use it. He was just
caught in possesion of it. They dialed around and heard police
officers. They noticed it could transmit. He went to jail. If the
emergency requires that I talk on a public service freq, I guess the
poor *******s will just have to die.
I'm not risking my ass over it. Besides, my radio is not opened up,
and is incapable of such a thing anyway. In other words, it's useless
speculation.

They also don't know or ever use morse code in any
emergency. In fact in disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes when we assist
them with our equipment and resources, we don't ever use morse code either, we use
voice every time.

So what? I wouldn't expect them to. I do expect at least one of those
hams to be capable of it though...If they can't, they ain't much of
an emergency station in my book.

I've actually dealt with a marine emergency on the radio. Have you?

No, all mine have been on land, but I am prepared to do so.

Not using CW you aren't, if you can barely handle an SOS...I hope the
boat can hit a repeater...:/

The testing
requirements for getting a GROL means you know what frequencies to monitor, and at
what times you have to be monitoring them and all that other good stuff relating to
marine emergencies, even though I got the license for broadcast use. Actually, now
the GROL doesn't even have any broadcast use, but some stations still like to see that
you have it if you want to be chief engineer. It is not required, but they like if
you have it. But getting it means you are tested on all this stuff too.
Interesting enough, morse code was never a requirement for that.

What does getting a GROL have to do with being capable of holding a CW
qso in an emergency?

Even when there was the First Class Radiotelephone Operators License for chief
engineers of Broadcast stations, there was no code requirement. You could be
working on and operating transmitters operating on 50,000 watts of power and not need
to know code, but for a citizen's hobby ham radio license where most are using
substantially less power, you needed to know code. It was an international
requirement, although Japan found a nice way to get around it, and the US decided that
you could get out of the international agreement by getting a doctor's note.

Again, what does this have to do with being able to hold a CW qso in
an emergency? I could give a rats rectum what the broadcasters do.

Lazy handicapped people?

You said it, not me.

Or is it that when you are handicapped or injured in an
emergency, you may not be able to operate a code key, only a microphone??? Aha!

If I can push a mike button, I can work a paddle. Besides, the mike on
my 706mk2g can be used as a code key in a pinch. Looks like I just
knocked down those lame ass excuses.

Wanna know how the boat got our attention though all the noise on 40m?
CW.

That doesn't do any good to those monitoring for a "mayday" like every GROL licensee
is doing.

What does GROL have to do with being able to work a cw qso in an
emergency? , or even noise in general? Do GROL'ers constantly listen
to the 40m phone band for emergencies? Sounds like a waste of time to
me...

No mention of Morse Code is ever brought up.

So? Most are probably too lazy to learn it anyway...Sounds like a
bunch of rubber duck commando's most likely...I envy them. They really
are OFFICIAL LOOKING radio operators. I wish I could hang 5 or 6 HT's
on my beltline without my pants falling down around my ankles. I'd be
a ®real operator then...

You are to ask for help
with the international distress call of MAYDAY.

They were too weak to get through on fone until we actually knew
they were there. After they got our attention, yes, we went to phone.

Of course you did. You needed to know where they were and all the other details.
If they had to pound it out one letter of the alphabet at a time with morse code, they
would have been dead before the message ever got out.

Do you really believe all this dribble you are spewing out? You need
to come by and watch me work CW. I'll straighten you out real fast.
It's obvious you have no earthly idea what you are talking about when
it comes to CW. I can receive CW faster than many of these rednecks
here in TX can talk. The coast guard met us on our freq , not the
other way around. If the boat had CW only, I'm sure they would have
dealt with it. How? They would let me do it and I would relay if they
had no one capable. See how useful I would be in such a case? See how
useless you would be? Kinda like tits on a bore hog...
You'd let them drown, not me.


Mainly because the coast guard station in Miami was on phone.

That's right. They don't use morse code, and neither does the military.

I think they are capable of it. "coast guard" Pretty sure they are as
a matter of fact. They usually have someone in the office that can
work a little CW if it's really needed. They wouldn't be much of a
coast guard if they couldn't.
Who cares about the military. I'm not planning on bombing a small
country.

Neither
do ANY emergency services like Police, Fire, Paramedics. No time to play around
with morse code in a real emergency. If it had ANY sort of advantage at all, they
would require the military, police, fire and paramedics to learn it. But they
don't, do they? Of course not. Case closed.

You have all these various agencies stuck so far up your heinie, it's
clouded your mind. I could give a flying #$%^ what they do. I'm only
concerned about what I can do, or have done as far as this thread is
concerned. I'm a ham, not a policeman or EMS. Why would I care what
they do? The only thing I care about is their being able to find my
ass, after I call them.


Next time you are stranded in your car and need a tow, why don't you call on

your cell phone and punch our your problem in morse code with the touch tone pad

Wow, you didn't even comprehend what you read, did you? It was meant to be a goofy
scenarios that would never happen, it was an example of the type of crap the morse
code people always bring up.

Is this phenomena related to the ridiculous crap some non coders bring
up?

Myself, I haven't brought up anything like that. You said in an
earlier post that no one ever works emergencies using CW. Fine. That's
your right. But, I'm flat out telling you that you are full of crap.
You are wrong and you are too stubborn to even consider otherwise. In
other words, you don't seem to like code, or even be willing to
concede it could be useful in some cases. I would call this a mental
block. It seems you think everyone should be like you and ignore a
potentially useful mode. But many of us aren't you. I learned code
when I was in the 8th grade. "32 years ago". I'm not going to quit
using it just because you don't think it's stylish or useful. It may
not be too stylish anymore, but it's still quite useful to people who
can work it. I could probably handle traffic just as fast on CW than I
could voice. Hell, you gotta write it all down anyway. What's the
difference? None to me. Maybe a lot to you. My handled traffic would
likely be more accurately transcribed if I used CW in bad or noisy
band cdx, than if I used phone. No guessing about letters or spelling.

Glad to hear you think it is goofy like I do, but too
bad you didn't even read what it said before you commented on it.

Oh, I read that silly crap just fine...

You just proved you are not reading any of these statements, just looking where a
paragraph ends and then making up an argument for the sake of argument.

You are just proving that even with someone telling you CW has been
used in an emergency, "me", you don't want to hear anything about it.
You just want to spew back all this uselss GROL crap. I'm not GROL.
Can we spell mental block?

Now everyone here knows you are a troll.

Well, I'd rather be a troll than someone who has a mental problem
dealing with code users. I have no problems with anyone that doesn't
want to use code. I could care less. But for someone to get on here
and spread ignorant falsehoods about it, that *will* get my goat. You
aren't really qualified to comment on the subject, if you can't hardly
work CW well enough to make out an SOS. It's like reading the other
day that PSK31 is hard to "tune" and operate, being so narrow. Again,
B.S...
Only someone who hasn't used it would say that. See a connection? I
can handle emergency traffic on any band, using any mode, including
cw. I'm ready for anything. You seem not to be. I have no problems
with that, as long as you don't mistakenly claim to be just as useful
an operator. If you can't work CW, you are inferior as an operator
when compared to me. Thats a fact, not speculation. Notice I didn't
say ham. I said OPERATOR. MK