hanson@ihuxq.UUCP (R. J. Hanson) (12/15/83)
I agree that there were turkeys who could not seem to stay off of the downlink frequency. I do NOT, however, agree with anything else which Mr. Schlesinger had to say. A pileup is a pileup. Just because there were thousands of people trying to get ahold of Dr. Garriott doesn't mean that a 2-meter pileup is any worse than any other rare DX pileup on HF. You must admit that a ham in space is a lot rarer than your run of the mill DX. I didn't think it was too bad here in Chicago the one day I tried to call "the wild blue". I wouldn't turn my nose up at all 2-meter op's just because I never heard a royal pileup on such a special event before. Since there was no DX control standing by, sure there will be lids... it would have happened on 20 meters or wherever, too ! To illustrate that point just a little further, I heard a most nauseating ragchew on 40 meters a few days ago (AM phone, too). Is that representative of your band choice or your license class ? Just because I have a new callsign, been a ham only about a year, and was a babe when you OM's were tearing apart 2-meter boat-anchors, doesn't necessarily mean you guys are any more technically capable than I am. You may know more about tubes, but I probably know more about MOSFET's and IC's! My Technician class effectively keeps me off of the low bands, and so all of my computer-based crowd congregate on the higher bands. We are more interested in state-of-the-art things like microprocessor-controlled repeaters, autopatch, voting repeater networks, RTTY, packet radio networks, crossband links, satellite and auroral operation, and even moonbounce than we are interested in getting our code speed up to unbelievable levels (our processors can do that... why bother?). I think there is more technology on 2-meters than on any other band! By the way, I have a 2-meter boat anchor in my basement, too! I use it to hold my Kenwood 7950 2-meter rig (which is the only one I have). I see no reason to work on my code on the low bands if all the OM's are going to treat me like a member of an inferior race because I can't operate a CW hand key as well as they can. How many times have I seen some ancient Extra callsign write into QST or '73, complaining about the quality of code on the Novice HF CW bands? Remember, they are NOVICE bands! Don't scare all of us newcomers away! If you want to KILL CW for good, just keep complaining about our code... pretty soon we'll give up. And when you old guys die off, there'll be NOBODY to replace you on the CW bands! Getting back to the main point, I hope NASA *DOES* allow more operation from space. Sure, we might have to change the protocol somewhat, but there's a first time for everything. I saw a TV news story about our working Columbia, and I feel we came across to the public very well. Long live amateur radio ! Long live computers ! Long live 2-meters ! R.J. Hanson N9DZZ, MTS @ Bell Labs, Naperville, Il. (IW 1A-407 x7663) ...ihnp4!ihuxq!hanson