[QCWA] Morse Article

[Gerd & Traudl Schrick]

  Morse Code: A Fading Signal (27Dec-06 NYT)

By MIGUEL HELFT 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/miguel_helft/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

It may be the ultimate S O S — Morse Code is in distress.

The language of dots and dashes has been the lingua franca of amateur 
radio, a vibrant community of technology buffs and hobbyists who have 
provided a communications lifeline in emergencies and disasters.

But that community has been shaken by news that the government will no 
longer require Morse Code proficiency as a condition for an amateur 
license. It was deemed dispensable in part because other modes of 
communicating over ham radio, like voice, teletype and even video, have 
grown in popularity.

While the decision had been expected, some ham radio operators fear that 
their exclusive club has been opened to the unwashed masses — and that 
the very survival of Morse Code is in question.

“It’s part of the dumbing down of America,” said Nancy Kott, editor of 
World Radio magazine and a field representative for the Centers for 
Disease Control and Prevention 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/centers_for_disease_control_and_prevention/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 
in Metamora, Mich. “We live in a society today that wants something for 
nothing.”

A woman in a mostly male world, Ms. Kott is one of about 660,000 
licensed ham operators in the United States and is the American leader 
of Fists CW Club, an organization that calls itself the International 
Morse Preservation Society. (An “open fist” was the hand position 
typically used by telegraph operators when sending Morse, which is 
sometimes called Continuous Wave, or CW. And in ham radio slang, someone 
who sends fine code is said to have a good fist.)

Within 48 hours after the Federal Communication Commission’s move this 
month to drop the Morse requirement, a discussion on www.eham.net 
<http://www.eham.net> ran more than 380 messages and 57,000 words long, 
the equivalent of a short novel. The postings were divided roughly 
evenly between those lamenting and praising the commission’s decision.

“CW is just another mode and should not be afforded any special priority 
over others,” wrote K4UUG, who like many radio aficionados identified 
himself online using his radio call sign. “Proficiency should not be 
required for those who do not wish to use the mode.”

As part of its decision to eliminate the Morse requirement, the 
commission made essentially the same point.

Inside a hilltop trailer above Stanford University 
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/stanford_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 
in Palo Alto, Calif., a couple of veteran coders seemed to be taking the 
commission’s decision in stride earlier this week. In a room cluttered 
with electronic equipment, they translated the dits and dahs that beeped 
in the background at dizzying speed, the chatter between someone in 
Canada, VE6NL to be precise, and someone off the coast of Antarctica, 
VP8CMH.

“It’s a bit like a foreign language,” said W6LD, whose real name is John 
Fore, a securities lawyer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a 
prominent Silicon Valley firm. “You learn it and it’s fun to use it.”

With thumb and forefinger barely touching the two metal ends of a Morse 
paddle, W6NL, a k a David B. Leeson, unleashed his own stream of dits 
and dahs with the ease of a virtuoso, joining the global conversation. 
“I fell head over heels for amateur radio when I was 4 or 5 years old 
and heard Morse Code signals from afar at the station of a 14-year-old,” 
said Mr. Leeson, 69, a consulting professor of engineering at Stanford. 
“I still remember the thrill.”

The thrill turned into a hobby, and the hobby turned into a career in 
technology. In 1968, Mr. Leeson founded California Microwave, once a 
thriving telecommunications equipment company but now defunct. Now radio 
and Morse are just for fun, said Mr. Lesson, who is faculty adviser to 
the Stanford Amateur Radio Club, which once counted William R. Hewlett 
and David Packard as members.

Mr. Leeson and Mr. Fore are both active in radio contests, 48-hour 
competitions in which hams try to contact as many other hams as 
possible, often using Morse. Mr. Leeson has a station in the Galapagos 
Islands, where he goes several times a year with his wife, Barbara 
(K6BL), for contests. They once contacted as many as 17,000 other hams 
in a weekend. Mr. Fore, who is 50, and got his first license when he was 
10, has a station in Aruba.

They embody the kind of utility-free passion for Morse that the futurist 
Paul Saffo said would ensure its survival.

“Freed from all pretense of practical relevance in an age of digital 
communications, Morse will now become the object of loving passion by 
radioheads, much as another ‘dead’ language, Latin, is kept alive today 
by Latin-speaking enthusiasts around the world,” Mr. Saffo, a fellow at 
the Institute for the Future, wrote in his blog.

Morse Code was first devised in the 1830s for use with the telegraph. It 
later became an essential part of civilian, maritime and military radio 
communications. But the military has largely abandoned its use in favor 
of newer technologies, and the Coast Guard stopped listening for Morse S 
O S signals at sea during the 1990s.

The F.C.C. first lifted the Morse Code requirement for entry-level 
licenses in 1991. It later dropped proficiency requirements for 
higher-level licenses to five words a minute, from 20. And after 
international regulations stopped mandating knowledge of it in 2003, it 
was only a matter of time until Morse Code was no longer required in the 
United States. The requirement will formally be phased out sometime next 
year.

The demise of the Morse requirement, however, could be a boon for ham 
radio itself. After the F.C.C.’s decision, the American Radio Relay 
League, an organization representing ham radio operators, said demand 
for information about radio licenses surged from about 200 in a typical 
weekend to about 500.

“We are very pleased to see that,” said David Sumner (K1ZZ), the 
league’s chief executive.

That is no consolation for the most avid defenders of Morse.

“There is something magical about being able to put two wires together 
and start going dit-dit-dit dit-dit,” said Ms. Kott, or WZ8C. “We are 
just going to have to get on the air and do what we do and hope for the 
best.”