Stephany.WBST@PARC-MAXC@sri-unix (11/30/82)
Pleased to meet you ! Glad you responded. It was never intended that CW be condisdered a replacement for other methods of modulation. My letter made it clear when all else fails that CW can get through. It is the simplicity of Cw that makes it necessary as the final back up system. Any system of communication is swell with me, and I really believe in the progress of all forms. However, when the chips are down, a knowledge of CW often, and not in isolated incidents, means the difference between life and death. The ethernet is a swell system and works well and fast as I sit in this dry office with plenty of 120 volts power. But what if I am on the road, in the wilderness etc., ? What if you were that guy on the boat going down with a smahed mike on the CB rig ? By the way, he sent his latitude and longitude not just an SOS. Further more you have a distorted picture of just what radio is, let alone ham radio. The first thing to learn is that radio (all forms) is not the world communication system. Cable is. The fundamental communication of the world, now and will be for decades to come, is Cable. Radio is reserved for communication that cannot be sent over Cable (like the ethernet). There is not enough spectrum space avaiable for all the computer fans etc.,and Ham radio should not be used to fullfill this need. The light pipe will eventually be the cable between home computer hobbyists. Ham radio is still the forefront of the development of Radio communication. All modes of communication by radio with the single exception of Back scatter and sattelite communcation, were developed by Hams. Incidently, I see that the military plan to use meteor trail communication as a backup in case the communication sattelites get shot down. This mode was discovered and developed by Hams. As far as the universallity of CW, it is still much easier to communicate with people that do not speak English with Morse Code, having done both myself in my 29 years as a Ham. In fact, such contacts are common on CW and very unusual on SSB. As far as ASCII goes, remember, most hams outside the US have no such equipment. The future of Ham radio belongs to those who prepare for the future. A knowlege of CW, as the final back up system, is manditory for good radio operators, not appliance operators. I suggest that if there are so many geniuses (computer or otherwise) that, being a genius, they would have no trouble at all in leaning Morse at only 5 WPM. Joe N2XS Spark Forever !!! PS, My I.Q. is 155, I work on computers, and I leaned the code. Maybe you should program one of your computers to teach you the code.
kelly@sri-unix (12/01/82)
It is not just isolated instances where CW has pulled the fat out of the fire for radio ops. I about 4 years of search and rescue work in New Mexico, I can remember at least 3 times that 2M HTs had their Mikes go out, and the hams used touch tones to send their messages in CW, sometimes life-saving due to the finding of injured victims, etc. Maybe the cold and snow contributed to the loss of crystal mike elements, but the CW contributed to the timely arrival of the team doctor. By the way, CW also served to keep relatively private information from the press, who often were listening to the progress of searches on scanners.