[Elecraft] kxpd3 question

[Jim Brown]

On 11/11/2017 9:45 AM, dyarnes wrote:
> I don’t think it is accurate to suggest that CW was used to keep people out of the hobby.

For at least the last 20-30 years of the 20th century, CW was used as a 
means of keeping the hobby "pure," a "rite of passage" that all current 
licensees had had to take, and that, anyone else wanting to enter their 
hallowed ground must also take. You had to be not paying attention not 
to be aware of this. It was easy to not be paying attention -- many of 
us, including me, were on and off the air for decades at a time as we 
lived our lives with jobs, families, even other interests. This was not 
unique to the US -- the CW requirement was from international 
governmental bodies.

Our large contesting club includes at least a dozen no-code licensees 
who have developed into fine CW operators and serious contesters. 
Recently, I heard of a ham club a few hours away from me that developed 
out of the interest of a local community organization in emergency 
communications -- this is a low population density community in the 
Santa Cruz mountains north of me, where the potential hazards are 
wildland fires, winter storms, and earthquakes.

Here's a link to photos from this year's Field Da. Notice the number of 
young hams on the air in the photos of the stations.

http://www.sc4arc.org/groups/general/forum/topic/field-day-photos/

Some of the photos show a pretty serious effort with antennas, and 
communications on their blog show well organized planning. There's a 
photo of their score summary in one of the photos. All SSB and digital. 
Here's their home page.

http://www.sc4arc.org/

73, Jim K9YC