[CW] Comments on the South African Morse proposal

[Andrew Roos]

Hi guys

Thanks to all who commented on our proposal. I am on the SARL Council so
perhaps I can clarify some things.

> From: Ku4uk@aol.com
> ZT License ! No code, Four HF Bands. Sounds like first step to
> All Bands to
> one and all. World wide CB.

Well I hope not. We specifically restricted both band segments and power to
encourage ZT licensees to upgrade to ZS, which still requires a Morse test.
However some compromise was necessary, otherwise we would have faced an
amateur community broken down into two "camps", one arguing for the complete
abolition of Morse and one for the retention of the existing requirement. An
email survey I did of my club members showed they are split 50/50 on the
issue, so there would be no clear winner. And with the first BPL pilot
project in South Africa launched this month, we have other equally important
matters to deal with.

> From: N7DC@cs.com
> Actually, it would be much closer to what I wrote earlier, than
> what we are likely to end up with.  Appears to me that the
> no-code licensees will not be able to work on the code portions
> of the band, and thats just what we need.   I disagree with
> dropping the code speed downt to 5wpm, but we have already lost
> that battle here.  If and when they learn and pass a code test,
> then they will be allowed to work on the code bands.

Yes in our view the ZT licensees should not have access to the CW-only
portions of the band since there is little to be gained from on-air practise
at speeds below 5 wpm. In any case, CW is allowable on all band segments so
they can practise within their allotted allocations.

> From: Ken Brown <ken.d.brown@verizon.net>
> Where are these "code portions" of the band? What we commonly refer to a
> CW subbands are "digital" subbands. There is no CW only HF subband. And
> the no effort crowd wants their computer to be able to operate digital
> modes in the digital subbands.

According to the South African bandplan the segments 1.810-18.38,
3.500-3.580, 7.000-7.035 and 21.000-21.080 are assigned for CW-only use. In
each case there is an adjoining band segment, e.g. 7.035-7.045 in the 40 m
band, which is marked for CW and digimodes. The ZT segments in the 160, 80
and 40-m bands cover the entire digimode and phone allocation, but exclude
the CW-only allocation. In the 15m band the allocation is from 21.300-21.450
MHz which coincides with the US General Class allocation.

73,
Andrew ZS1AN