[CW] Dumb down not justified - excuse the abortion, I accidentally hit `send' for `spell check'

Sun, 06 Jul 2003 18:49:11 +0000

   The novice 40 meter assignment deep within the European broadcast
band has historically been devastating to novices trying to upgrade
to general, for those that didn't have room to put up an eighty meter
antenna especially those that "home built" a 80/40 meter transmitter,
very common in the 50's and 60's.  Do you remember being rock bound?
   I remember adding a 500 Hz crystal lattice filter to my receiver
in the early 60's and I found a few QSO's tucked one or two hundred Hz
from the carrier of radio Moscow for a lack of free room between the
sidebands of the high power BC stations.  * BFO not needed or desired
   Without room for QSO's the daily practice couldn't occur so they
couldn't reach 13 wpm within the year, so we lost many fine hams.
I have talked with hundreds over the last 40 years, asking mostly
about antennas over my house or on my car, they said: `I was a novice
when I was a kid, but I couldn't get my code up to 13 within the year
so I had to give it up.'
   Some folks had no trouble learning cw, the rest failed, as I did, but
I was saved by my perseverance and the advent of the re-newable novice
license. (17 years) Then the "woodpecker" made me stay quiet until I
heard it was no longer in use.
   The FCC blew it for thousands of would have been (by now) old timers
with that crappy assignment, the lousiest 25 kc on 40.
   Ron ka4inm

> open up more space for Novice/Tech Plus types so they could have a 
> better chance of making some contacts. I figured that HF and CW in 
> particular might still have some appeal to a certain percentage of the 
> newbies if they actually had a chance to do some QSO-ing, rather than 
> being confined to tiny slices of several HF bands where activity 
> was/is slim to none.
-- 
        73 (= Best Regards) de: Ron [email protected]
     100% Slack. since July, 1997 (still free!) SENT D&T are UTC
        Visit my HAM Web SITE at: http://www.qsl.net/ka4inm