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

[ah7i@atl.org]

There seems to be a steady stream of excuses. Paraphrased:

I'm not a natural.
It was hard.
No one helped me.
Hams missed an opportunity.
It was a struggle so I gave up.

What's the theme in these comments?



Sure, it's easier for some people. My spouse, BA music, MA Piano
Performance, PhD, career woman who found a job in Hawaii, managed to get
up to 20WPM in a tad over an hour. That's it kids. An hour to extra class
speed. So yes, it's natural for some folks...

For the majority of us, it took a great many hours. Sure, I went from
novice to extra in less than a year but I was operating about 20
hours/week! Not just sitting in fron of the radio, but struggling to copy
through QRN, 40m BC, woodpecker, contests, sisters HiFi, etc. If I wasn't
in QSO, I was hunting DX by copying every call and QTH I could. Copy
faster = more DX and more trying to copy = copying faster. I think this
sort of 'practice', because it is fun, is often mistaken for a knack for
the code. It wasn't a knack, to me radio was code. Heck, I went into it
without voice privileges! I know a lot of other hams, and many of them
started out wanting to 'talk'. Their entire focus was on getting to 13WPM
so they could talk. No care for conversations by way of code. Many never
even listened to CW on the RADIO. For the most part, those who managed to
get their general and advanced class never listened to CW again...It's
fine by me but this business of code being too difficult, from people who
have never spent the time to learn elicits absolutely no sympathy. Perhaps
what they are really saying is, "it wasn't easy enough"...Heck, even deaf
guys have learned morse...

If you like to talk to people, especially DX, it's a lot more fun with
morse. It's possible to have an actual conversation without $50-100k
tied up in amplifiers and antennas.

-Bob ah7i