[Qcwa] The vocal minority or majority

[J Craswell]

>I'd accuse the ARRL of acting on behalf a small but VERY
>vocal minority regarding the requiremenst for morse code,
>but then a majority of the people back in newington ARE
>part of that very volcal minority.

>Jeff

Hi Jeff:

I was asked (pretty much out of the blue) to meet and talk about that with
out local ARRL chief when it was a hot item.  Frankly I studied the problem
and became one of those vocal minorities.  The fellow asking the opinions
never gave me his opinion.  His deputy was strongly of the no-code variety.
BTW I was never asked before (or since) what I thought about anything but I
felt at the time they were going out and getting some opinions.  When I came
to the table I did some (I admit) amateur tabulation at the number of
operators on CW vrs SSB.  I dialed around and counted.  No, not very
scientific but the results were a big surprise to me because I had not
really formed my own opinion.  The result was slightly hedged to the SSB
folks.  I forget the exact numbers but it was like 46% CW and 54% ssb.  My
reasoning was if this many people were still using it we should have it play
an important part of our exams.  The ARRL deputy ripped me a new one and
accused of being an elitist or Anti new op etc.  "How fast you Beep does not
show how good a Ham you are."  And other old school debate tactics to ignore
facts and figures and turn it into a personal attack.

The league chief fellow told me that the "poll" they did gave similar
numbers to my amateur poll.  BTW I believe the RSGB had a Majority prefer a
Code test yet they have done quite a bit to get rid of it.  I would accuse
them of ignoring what they knew was a majority <grin>  BTW I also did
another (perhaps) slightly more scientific test by using the DX cluster to
record those stations in the CW band and those in the SSB band and got about
the same results.  I did this btw on 20, 40 metres and if I recall 15.  What
I wanted was the most active bands.

All of that and my formal suggestion to leave things pretty much as they wer
e are history.  I suppose its all water over the bridge but at least up here
the League was calling people and asking what they thought.  If they didn't
get to you I suggest the sheer number of hams and cost to reach them all
would be more likely than a Pro Code Conspiracy! <grin>

73 de Jay W0VNE