[1000mp] FT1000MP Key Clicks

Wed, 1 Jan 2003 08:36:15 -0500

While I do not subscribe to the notion that we should petition to repeal the
CW requirement (what's left of it), the sailboat analogy got me thinking (I
do that a couple times a year).

20 years ago I would have been very happy to learn how to sail.  Seems so
peaceful. All the pictures show a great time by all and the weather was
always fair, etc.  But, I never ran into anyone who sailed and consequently
never became a sailor.

Sure, I could have invested some time, sought out various sources, and
gotten into it myself and maybe in that way established a friendship that
would have hooked me.  I'll never know.

Isn't there something akin to a critical mass that is needed here?  To abuse
Pete's analogy further, had I lived in an area where sailing was done by a
ton of people, I would have learned the ropes.  Lower the population of
sailors and at some point, they become so hard to find, as in my case,
someone with a spark of interest turns to other things.

CW operating I think is quite similar.  Given the regs that foster little,
if any, competence in CW sending/receiving (to ignore OPERATING for a
moment), the population of CW operators that do have those skills is bound
to be on a downward curve.  Hams are already a miniscule part of the world
population.  Those with CW competence even smaller. Make that small
segment's population reduce drastically over time at some point IMHO you can
no longer sustain the "art."

I listened to a commentary last night that seems to apply here as well.  The
discussion, triggered by Charlie Wrangel (sp?), was a social commentary that
dealt with the military service draft.  The sense of the discussion was that
the US lost something over the years when we stopped the draft.  The draft
was the one place were people of all sorts of backgrounds,
ethnic/religious/etc, were forced to come together and were molded into a
military force. In the process these people, who otherwise would never have
been friends, compatriots, became people who trusted their lives to their
buddies.  We had lost that one, mandatory, social force -the draft- that
forced such contact.

If you buy that argument at all, apply it to our current situation.  The FCC
has removed the CW requirement (stoppped the draft).  The Novice license is
gone.   Gone are the days where all hams pretty much HAD to operate CW at
least for a while (gone due to many things, not the least of which is the
tape recorder!).   A large group of hams out there will never have a contact
with using CW to make a contact. It was hard before. Current events, rules
and technology have made it harder still.

So:  (1) We're losing/have lost our CW critical mass, (2) Only we, who have
mastered the art of CW, are left to pass that art on to others.  Unless we
do that, the art will be essentially gone.

This is more than marketing.   The CW Dark Ages have begun.

Happy New Year all and 73,

Gary W2CS

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Pete Smith
> Sent: Tuesday, December 31, 2002 9:43 PM
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: RE: [1000mp] FT1000MP Key Clicks
>
>
> At 05:34 PM 12/31/02 -0800, Adam Farson wrote:
> >There is a strong chance that WRC-2003 or WRC-2006 will repeal S25.5 (the
> >requirement for Morse code proficiency as a precondition for
> access to the
> >amateur bands below 30 MHz). If this does occur, and the FCC does not
> >footnote the requirement back in for the US, it is highly likely
> that within
> >5 to 10 years of the change there will be precious little, if any, CW
> >activity left on the HF amateur bands. The whole question of
> key-clicks will
> >then become more or less irrelevant.
>
> I'm skeptical about this.  Sailboats have been impractical, not required
> etc. for a hundred years, but somehow people seem to go on
> sailing.  Sailors still appreciate good sailing when they see it.
>
> 73, Pete N4ZR
> Happy Holidays
>
>
>
>
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