andy%aids-unix@sri-unix.UUCP (07/08/84)
From: Andy Cromarty <andy@aids-unix> [Warning: Yes, this is another opinion about no-code.] Once again I find myself fascinated by the line of reasoning espoused by opponents of the "no-code" license. To suggest that anyone who wishes to have a ham license but does not favor morse code examinations belongs in the spectral swamp that CB occupies seems to me to do grave disservice not only to the person who is the target of that criticism, but to the potential of amateur radio as well. I don't doubt that many hams fail to remember (at least without prompting) that there are other modes than voice and CW, and that lots of hams pursue those other modes. So apparently it needs saying: it does NOT stand to reason that anyone who doesn't wish to use CW obviously deserves no more communication capability than is afforded by a 5-watt 11-meter AM transceiver in a tiny and greatly overcrowded piece of the spectrum. Even if we accept the claim that hams have certain responsibilities as a result of the government-granted privileges that accompany the license, it certainly is not clear that this responsibility cannot be fulfilled through active participation in traffic nets, emergency communications drills, operation of special events stations to promote international good will, or serving as a QSL manager for a foreign station. The mysticism that elevates CW to the status of being sole source of evidence of True Dedication escapes me entirely, and I have yet to hear the passioned pleas for QSL managerships that I hear for code preparedness. Further, arguments that CW is good for emergency communications, given the low level of CW skill and homebrew electronics capability of most hams today, seem to me to be so weak as to no longer be tenable (or perhaps even intelligent). CW is excellent for weak-signal work of the sort that hams pursue as hobbyists; it is *horrible* for emergency communications. Just a quick look at your local traffic net's message rate (now how many of you belong to your local traffic net?) will show that those nasty little CB-like VHF FM handhelds are almost identically as effective in messages-per-minute as CW -- and remember that the CW message rates are in effect artificially inflated estimates of the utility of CW for traffic work, since the hams who routinely handle traffic on CW tend to have code skills far superior to those of the average ham (whereas anyone who can hold a mike and a pencil can pass traffic on the local VHF traffic net). If you want reliable and rapid emergency traffic handling, try packet radio; CW will never be able to compete with packet (or AMTOR) for traffic reliability. And in case you know so little about major disasters as to believe that every ham will run into his/her shack immediately after a nuclear blast has melted the VHF rig and start building a CW rig out of beer bottles wrapped with telephone wire, crystals, and lemon-juice batteries, you're overdue for a good course at the local Red Cross chapter on disaster services in general and the sociology of disasters in particular. Hams will be trying to figure out how to get drinking water out of their water heater, just like everyone else. While I'm on a roll: The claims that we hams have a moral responsibility to provide emergency communications (with which I happen to agree) and that our access to the spectrum is a "privilege rather than a right" granted out of the generosity of the U.S. Government (with which I happen to disagree) might find a more receptive audience if they're labelled as just that: claims. They are opinions, so let's admit the fact and treat them as such. Those interested in the topic of whether the government should "own" and then carve up the spectrum for citizens -- including prohibiting them from not only transmitting, but even listening to certain parts of the spectrum (own a radar detector in your car? is it legal in your state?) -- might fruitfully explore the ARPANET Poli-Sci Digest as an appropriate forum for discussion of such opinions. If those opinions are aired here, we could all at least do each other the courtesy of admitting that our views are at best personal truths -- and do our views the courtesy of supporting them with substantive reasoning and explanation rather than capital letters and lots of exclamation marks. Perhaps it is this substitution of religious zeal for reasoned argumentation that causes a CW enthusiast like me to be left cold by anti-"no-code" arguments. Finally, it would seem prudent to remember that we are arguing about a MODE here. I'd better say that it again: CW is a mode. We are not talking about evidence of a newcomer's technical qualifications, good citizenship, or moral fiber, and there are plenty of potential hams out there who might make a tremendous contribution while using RTTY, AMTOR, ASCII, AM, FM, SSB, NBVM, spread-spectrum, pulse modulation, packet, facsimile, or ATV. Imagine insisting that a knowledge of packet radio and digital techniques are invaluable to emergency communications and that no one should be permitted to call themselves a ham, even a Novice, before having mastered digital electronics and computer networking in reasonable detail, in order to fulfill our moral responsibility to be ready to provide emergency communications. (Frankly, that sounds a lot more realistic to me than the corresponding CW argument.) The answer still must be: This is a hobby; packet and CW are just modes; there are many ways to pursue the hobby, and many ways to serve the community, all worthwhile. ***Sender closed connection*** === Network Mail from host simtel20.arpa on Sun Jul 8 00:56:40 ===
andy%aids-unix@sri-unix.UUCP (07/08/84)
From: Andy Cromarty <andy@aids-unix> [Warning: Yes, this is another opinion about no-code.] Once again I find myself fascinated by the line of reasoning espoused by opponents of the "no-code" license. To suggest that anyone who wishes to have a ham license but does not favor morse code examinations belongs in the spectral swamp that CB occupies seems to me to do grave disservice not only to the person who is the target of that criticism, but to the potential of amateur radio as well. I don't doubt that many hams fail to remember (at least without prompting) that there are other modes than voice and CW, and that lots of hams pursue those other modes. So apparently it needs saying: it does NOT stand to reason that anyone who doesn't wish to use CW obviously deserves no more communication capability than is afforded by a 5-watt 11-meter AM transceiver in a tiny and greatly overcrowded piece of the spectrum. Even if we accept the claim that hams have certain responsibilities as a result of the government-granted privileges that accompany the license, it certainly is not clear that this responsibility cannot be fulfilled through active participation in traffic nets, emergency communications drills, operation of special events stations to promote international good will, or serving as a QSL manager for a foreign station. The mysticism that elevates CW to the status of being sole source of evidence of True Dedication escapes me entirely, and I have yet to hear the passioned pleas for QSL managerships that I hear for code preparedness. Further, arguments that CW is good for emergency communications, given the low level of CW skill and homebrew electronics capability of most hams today, seem to me to be so weak as to no longer be tenable (or perhaps even intelligent). CW is excellent for weak-signal work of the sort that hams pursue as hobbyists; it is *horrible* for emergency communications. Just a quick look at your local traffic net's message rate (now how many of you belong to your local traffic net?) will show that those nasty little CB-like VHF FM handhelds are almost identically as effective in messages-per-minute as CW -- and remember that the CW message rates are in effect artificially inflated estimates of the utility of CW for traffic work, since the hams who routinely handle traffic on CW tend to have code skills far superior to those of the average ham (whereas anyone who can hold a mike and a pencil can pass traffic on the local VHF traffic net). If you want reliable and rapid emergency traffic handling, try packet radio; CW will never be able to compete with packet (or AMTOR) for traffic reliability. And in case you know so little about major disasters as to believe that every ham will run into his/her shack immediately after a nuclear blast has melted the VHF rig and start building a CW rig out of beer bottles wrapped with telephone wire, crystals, and lemon-juice batteries, you're overdue for a good course at the local Red Cross chapter on disaster services in general and the sociology of disasters in particular. Hams will be trying to figure out how to get drinking water out of their water heater, just like everyone else. While I'm on a roll: The claims that we hams have a moral responsibility to provide emergency communications (with which I happen to agree) and that our access to the spectrum is a "privilege rather than a right" granted out of the generosity of the U.S. Government (with which I happen to disagree) might find a more receptive audience if they're labelled as just that: claims. They are opinions, so let's admit the fact and treat them as such. Those interested in the topic of whether the government should "own" and then carve up the spectrum for citizens -- including prohibiting them from not only transmitting, but even listening to certain parts of the spectrum (own a radar detector in your car? is it legal in your state?) -- might fruitfully explore the ARPANET Poli-Sci Digest as an appropriate forum for discussion of such opinions. If those opinions are aired here, we could all at least do each other the courtesy of admitting that our views are at best personal truths -- and do our views the courtesy of supporting them with substantive reasoning and explanation rather than capital letters and lots of exclamation marks. Perhaps it is this substitution of religious zeal for reasoned argumentation that causes a CW enthusiast like me to be left cold by anti-"no-code" arguments. Finally, it would seem prudent to remember that we are arguing about a MODE here. I'd better say that it again: CW is a mode. We are not talking about evidence of a newcomer's technical qualifications, good citizenship, or moral fiber, and there are plenty of potential hams out there who might make a tremendous contribution while using RTTY, AMTOR, ASCII, AM, FM, SSB, NBVM, spread-spectrum, pulse modulation, packet, facsimile, or ATV. Imagine insisting that a knowledge of packet radio and digital techniques are invaluable to emergency communications and that no one should be permitted to call themselves a ham, even a Novice, before having mastered digital electronics and computer networking in reasonable detail, in order to fulfill our moral responsibility to be ready to provide emergency communications. (Frankly, that sounds a lot more realistic to me than the corresponding CW argument.) The answer still must be: This is a hobby; packet and CW are just modes; there are many ways to pursue the hobby, and many ways to serve the community, all worthwhile. I am still patiently waiting for a convincing argument against the no-code license. In the meantime I am ambivalent on the subject. Perhaps many of you who oppose no-code don't particularly care. But if you can't convince someone like me who already uses CW voluntarily, how will you be able to convince newcomers? The most I can say to them now is "It's not too hard to learn enough CW to get your Tech and get your feet wet, and it's good for specialized weak-signal work, and if you don't like it, you don't have to use it." That admits to them that the CW requirement is capricious and arbitrary, and is hardly a substitute for a convincing argument of its intrinsic merit. Anyone got one? 73s, Andy N6JLJ
CarpenterCR.dlos@XEROX.ARPA (07/08/84)
Andy, Nice job. Tnx. 73 Chuck... W5USJ
ptb%Mitre-Bedford@sri-unix.UUCP (07/09/84)
Andy, I like your style and appreciate your reasoning - this is indeed an argument of opinions here. My opinion is that there is one good reason for requiring people to have some baseline proficiency in the Morse Code. Have you ever noticed how well code can be copied even in the event of extreme interferenceor fading? This could be coming from a number of sources: just plain distance, other stations on the air, or sunspot activity to name a few. FM voice does not work well at all under these conditions because of the larger bandwidth requirements of the voice (about 3 khz), and also the "capture effect" of the FM detectors such that the stronger will mask out all the weaker signals. Therefore, someone USING morse code may very well be able to get through when someone else using SSB or FM or another mode may not. The stakes in this could be quite high, even life and death (remember Amateur radio has indeed played a good part in many National and International emergencies. (And what about ships at sea??) Now, I ask you, what good is being able to get through to a receiver with a mode, Morse code or anything else, if the operator on the other end is not capable of deciphering what the sender is saying?? In my mind, this is the real reason for the code requirement - to have radio amateurs be ready to assist in an emergency rather than have to pass for lack of the appropriate skills. - Peter Baldwin, WA1SNH (ptb@mitre-bedford)
jhs%Mitre-Bedford@sri-unix.UUCP (07/09/84)
Right on, Pete. Andy, I enjoyed your pitch also. Also the suggested new exam questions from Mike, K3MC, which however I thought were not sufficiently demanding if they were intended as a substitute for Morse code proficiency. I also lament the dearth of "real" hams these days who can wire up fully synthesized full-duplex quadraphase multiplex SSB transceivers out of parts from an old discarded telephone handset. Or even fix their own equipment when it breaks. My own reply comments to the FCC, though stressing the emergency communications value of the code, also allowed as how a code-free license might not be too bad if it substituted a tough technical examination and if it restricted operations to the less crowded bands above 220 MHz. Since the issue is dead at the FCC for now, I submit that it would be constructive for us all to shift our energies to the task of encouraging and helping newcomers to the hobby to get past the code requirement. For example, does anybody out there have a code practice program that will run on reasonable hardware? I have one which is in Fortran and runs on a lot of terminals, using the beeper to generate the sound. Unfortunately this VT-100 won't sustain the beep so I can't make it work on this one. Does anybody know how to modify the VT-100 so the beep timer will "retrigger" without a glitch? Is there a simple timer chip substitution that will do this? I haven't looked into it. The Lear-Siegler ADM-3 worked fine at about 7WPM and the Tektronix graphics terminals would go up to about 20 WPM with very nice keying quality. If anybody would like a copy of the program I would be glad to forward it over the net. (Please allow a week or two for delivery as I have to locate the tape and get it read in and maybe fool around with format problems.) If there is any interest, I for one could run some code practice on the air for anybody in the East or Midwest. Also, for Novices or Techs trying to upgrade, I would be happy to make skeds for code practice. I could also be persuaded to record code practice on tape for anybody who wants to send me a blank tape (if demand is not too great). Is anybody else out there willing to help in these ways? If so, perhaps you could identify yourself to those who could use your help. Let's not make everybody wait 12 years for the FCC to look at the issue again! Let's encourage them to go ahead and learn the code! 73 de W3IKG jhs at mitre-bedford
yba@mit-athena.ARPA (Mark H Levine) (07/12/84)
My major reason for upgrading to Extra is to join the Volunteer Examiner Program. Not only do we have to recruit and train, now we have to test. It takes three licensed amateurs, at least one of whom is an Extra to give exams. Exams for Extra Class require all three to be Extra Class licensees. I am interested in how the VEs will be organized, and whether ARRL or Wayne Green will be my regional VEC (volunteer examiner co-ordinator). Any info on the program and how it is going in other areas would be most appreciated. -- yba%mit-heracles@mit-mc.ARPA UUCP: decvax!mit-athena!yba