[Qcwa] The Blackout of 2003

[qcwa@mailman.qth.net]

In a message dated 23-Aug-03 15:28:01 Eastern Daylight Time, 
jangus@socal.rr.com writes:

> Harvey&Bessie wrote:
> 
> >The hobby will be there in some form or another, no doubt. But if FCC 
> allows BPL to be
> >implemented there will have to be some drastic changes. There never has 
> been as great a
> >threat to ham radio as this monster.
> >
> 
> I fail to see the problem here. With the introduction of BPL, it will 
> pretty well trash
> the phone bands and the only method of getting through will be 
> digitially processed
> CW. That should make all the "Morse Forever" types happy.
> 
> Jeff
> wa6fwi

There appears to be some individuals who have a CW phobia..  mention CW and 
they run to their keyboards.

Having been involved in the J.O.T.A. (Jamboree On The Air for the Boy/Girl 
Scouts) I have discovered that if you show a non-ham young scout a handheld, the 
reaction is "ho hum" it's like a cellphone and they already have one of 
those..  Packet/RTTY or even SSB HF (or VHF) does not impress them..   But when I 
put the HW-8 CW rig on the air with a small rcvr just a couple hundred yards 
away and let them hear and "decode" a simple message that impresses them.  Give 
them a couple flashlights and a simple code chart and they discover the magic  
of being able to send a message using Morse Code..   Go out in the woods and 
try to send a message using your computer.  The Boy Scouts eliminated the old 
morse code requirement because some of the leaders had difficulty learning 
it..

If the ham population wants to get young people involved - computers don't 
cut it - the games and the internet has removed that mystery and interest.

Of course those who have the phobia wont be cured even though they have an 
Extra class license and dont have to use CW ---  It is still the monster under 
their bed that they are trying to convince others to chase it away..

So sad.


--- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts ---
multipart/alternative
  text/plain (text body -- kept)
  text/html
The reason this message is shown is because the post was in HTML
or had an attachment.  Attachments are not allowed.  To learn how
to post in Plain-Text go to: http://www.expita.com/nomime.html  ---