[CW] The future can still be good

[David J. Ring Jr - N1EA]

I made such a proposal of the view of the future if such-and-such a
direction of action was taken to Secretary of ARRL, Dave Sumner, K1ZZ when I
urged him to file a statement supporting the "broadcast technicians" at
radio and television stations in the USA.

It all started around 1975 when the FCC agreed to replace the traditional
(and efficient) longwire (top loading for vertical mast) antennas for CW on
500 kHz distress.  They accepted a engineers proposal that a 35 foot top
loaded by cage vertical antenna had equal signal strength to the longwire
type antenna.  The ship owners didn't want to loose time by taking down the
radio antenna every time the CONTAINER SHIPS went into port.

I've used these antennas - you have to wait until the other ships signals
are about S5 for him to hear you at all.   Then you'd be S1.  So I would
guess they were down about 30 dB in strength.

Next the AM/FM/TV stations:

What the FCC had done was to "specially interpret" the international
requirement that the operator of such stations have a "General
Radiotelephone Operators Certificate" (GROL) (1st and 2nd class FCC phone
licenses).  FCC had interpreted the rules in a very new way:  This is an
international agreement, and thus only meant for radio signals that will
propagate over other countries.

So the FCC said that we no longer needed Radio Operators at AM, FM and TV
stations.

When cellphones were being dreamed up, the lawyers specifically drafted
language to avoid having the cellphone be identified as a radio, thus
allowing the regulation that all repair work on these be done by General
Radiotelephone Operator's Certificate (GROL) FCC licensed (2nd class
Radiotelephone) do the work.

Next on the firing line was the Radio Officers at sea - the International
Maritime Organization - while finding that CW had wonderful efficiency and
was very reliable, bowed to the wishes of their member states who were being
pressured to lower man power.  They agreed to a change, then referred the
actual changes to their UN sister organization, the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU).  The ITU put in safety wording that the
"new" system be totally tested and shown to be EQUAL TO OR BETTER THAN   the
MORSE SYSTEM.  Then later, the members managed to do away with the testing
requirements, and the system went into place in 1999.  Of course there were
numerous excemptions given - so now we have ships on the high seas who don't
have the new equipment - fishing vessels and far East Asians mostly.

Now No-Code International has twisted those events to say that CW was ruled
inefficient and unreliable.  Hog Wash!

What I predicted to Dave Sumner, K1ZZ in 1986 was this:

The politicians will take away the Broadcast Operators, then they will take
away the Radio Officers on ships, then all RADIO related industries in the
marine field will fail because those who replace Sparks won't bother to do
radio.  Then someone will bad mouth CW because they will say it will no
longer be valuable because ships don't use it.  They will get rid of the
morse requirement for ham radio, then they will get rid of the technical
requirement for ham license.

I predicted that in 10 years after they got rid of Radio Officers (1999)
that ham radio would no longer be what it is.  That date will be 2009.

I then predicted that in 20 years there would be NO ham radio because there
would be no need for any specially trained operators.  Everyone could do
radio.  This will be 2019.

Phil Clegg of the American Radio Association-AFL-CIO made the observation:

They've taken a simple technology system that everyone understands how it
works, but only a few can do and replaced it with a complicated technology
system no one understands how it works but everyone can do.  Almost ANYONE
can repair a simple CW (or SPARK!) transmitter  - but who can repair a
digital microwave satellite seeking shipboard transceiver?  Very Few!

KH6IJ - the late Katachi Nose - professor of physics at University of
Hawaii - used to teach code.  His students leaned by sound (the correct way)
and all of them within a month were copying 20 wpm.  Nose's enthusiasm was
contageous.  Old timers remember KH6IJ running pile ups during the DX
contests usually sending 35 wpm and having QSOs with people sending 45 to
50.

I fear that my prediction will come true - we will have changed ham radio so
much that it won't be needed - why give up spectrum space to a bunch of
hobbiests when there is no need to train operators?

73

DR




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tim Randa" <tranda@cox.net>
To: "CW Reflector" <CW@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, July 07, 2003 9:52 AM
Subject: [CW] The future can still be good


Hello my friends. Many of the posts the last few days have told of attempts
and accomplishments of learning morse code. In my mind it makes little
difference how a person learns code. Duct tape a code cassette on your
forehead when you sleep if it works for you. Those that haven't yet learned
or those who have convinced themselves they can't hopefully have picked up a
few pointers or maybe some motivation. I was lucky enough to have a local
club that offered code classes, and I considered myself very lucky to have
gotten in ham radio (1978) back when all a novice had was cw. It forced me
to learn and increase my speed in order to upgrade, and offered no
distractions that took me away from cw operation as the new hams of today
have to deal with. Looking at the open hostility towards code now a days and
the inevitable dropping of the code requirement in the future I have little
doubt the fight for our beloved mode is just beginning. The nocode crowd
don't just want to drop the requirements...they will not be satisfied till
cw is off the bands altogether. Every time they hear cw on the bands they
will think/know that someone thinks them less than a real ham for not
knowing code. It is an agenda that started many years ago and will continue
till you only need to send in the post card that came with your new radio
for a license to operate. As the years click by our cw portion of the bands
will get smaller and smaller. I predict in 10 years the cw "elitist" will be
in a very narrow sliver of band space and the ssb crowd will get their
jollies "dropping the key" on cw qso's. I hope I'm wrong...but that is
rarely the case...hi

Just a thought to a great reflector

de Tim  K�FL

*****************************************************************
France has neither winter, nor summer, nor morals.
France is miserable because it is filled with
Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable
because they live in France. - Mark Twain


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