[OKDXA] NO CODE WHATEVERS

[K8fu at aol.com]

Glen sent me the following email which I found most  interesting and 
enjoyable and which I'm  forwarding...............
 
It will be interesting to see how many new cw  operators we find on the bands 
in a yr or two with calls that we know are of a  recent vintage.
 
These are people I really want to meet as it's obvious  that they REALLY hv a 
commitment to ham  radio.......................
 
Thank for the response.


I certainly meant nothing by my reply to  the "CW LID" email other than to
make others think about how the same logic  for doing away with the code
COULD be used to justify doing away with the  written exams.  I certainly
don't want to see that happen.

In my  professional career, I've forgotten many a formula but I know where to
get  the information and that is what is important.  You obviously have  a
resource in W5TM and that is great.  I will also share with you  an
experience I had at an Arkansas hamfest where the section manager offered  a
brand new ARRL handbook to any recently licensed technician class  operator
who could recite the formula for a dipole.  There was dead  silence. And the
silence continued for 30 or 40 seconds.  I was sitting  behind the Delta
Division director, K5UR, and his wife Holly, who isn't  licensed. Holly
leaned over to Rick and said, "Wow, even I know that  formula".  Ultimately,
no one answered the question and the SM had to  change who he was going to
give the Handbook to by asking who was the person  that was the most recently
licensed. That experience happened almost 10 years  ago but it really opened
my eyes.

Personally, I have never viewed CW  as a filter but maybe I'm wrong. I wanted
my ham ticket and I was willing to  invest the time and energies to "earn"
it. My first exams, circa 1973, were  not like the exams of today.  You had
no idea what they was going to be  asked.  The license manuals were more like
text books and all you knew  going into the exam was that the questions were
likely to be about the  material you studied.  You didn't know, verbatim,
what the questions  were going to be.

I saw some statistics where about 50% of the licensed  operators were
Technician class or lower.  I don't have the numbers but  I have to wonder
how many of these 300 to 400 thousand technicians are of the  "no-code"
variety.  I was just amazed that 50% of those in our hobby  have chosen, for
whatever reason, NOT to invest the effort into learning the  code even when
the requirement was lowered to 5 wpm. 

IMHO, the  dropping of the code will result in little more that an increase
in the  number of general and extra class licensees.  I heard said and I
think  it hits the nail on the head - "You have to make amateur radio
something that  people want to get involved in." Dropping the code isn't
going to be the  reason people suddenly get interested in amateur radio". If
code was the  reason that people didn't get involved in amateur radio then we
should have  seen much larger numbers of people becoming no-code tech than we
did back in  the early 90's.   And we certainly would have seen more  renewals
than we have when the first set or renewals for the tech no-codes  came up. 

Being a 20 wpm extra, I wasn't happy to see the code completely  eliminated.
But I also saw it coming.

Thanks for listening to my  ramblings.  Now I'll continue my search for VU7LD
on SSB and RTTY!   And yes, I have them on CW.

73,
Glenn
N5RN
 
Ribbit..................................Ribbit............................   
BOHICA