RadioBanter - View Single Post

November 28th 03, 11:04 PM

In article , (N2EY)
writes:

In article .net, "Dwight
Stewart" writes:

"N2EY" wrote:

Then SSB, AM, FM, RTTY, PSK-31, etc.
are all non-necessities. (snip)

Absolutely. Which is exactly why there is no test of the actual ability to
use those modes - only a written test covering the fundamentals of those
modes and the rules associated with them.

Why is such a written test necessary? The use of any of those modes is
entirely optional.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Circularity. USE of morse code is ALSO optional
yet the manual, "receive-by-ear" code test remains.

You are trying to have it both ways and knot yourself up...

Morse code should join those modes in that regard.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that.

Amazing for you to admit that. :-)

The FCC has
never has never purported, or even suggested, that the Amateur Radio exams,
and resulting licenses, are anything beyond that (only a few self-important
hams have done so).

Yet in the past there have been repeated instances where qualifed
radio-electronics people were needed on short notice and they were recruited
from the ranks of amateur radio.

Time today is NOT the "past" and the rest of the radio world has
advanced beyond hanging a carbon microphone in an antenna
lead and saying it is a "voice transmitter." :-)

If what matters is the learning that happens *after* the license is in hand,
why all the fuss about written tests?

Tsk, tsk, tsk...back to the circularity again (you are going around in
circles vainly trying to "prove you are right" and you aren't...).

The FCC determines what THEY need in ANY radio operator license
or station license. The "amateur community" doesn't license anyone.
U.S. radio amateurs are still free to make their desires known to the
Commission...as are any U.S. citizens, licensed or not, in any civil
radio service.

Amateur radio licensing is just a regulatory tool of the FCC. It isn't
some kind of certificate of achievement like a degree, diploma, etc.
Neither is it some "pass" into a New Lifestyle. It is nothing more than
a permission to legally operate by certain allocated modes in certain
allocated frequency bands. Your "lifestyle" commentary is just your
own, not some divine dictate of morals or ethics in an avocation. If
you want to live, breathe, give over your life to amateurism, that is
your personal choice and yours alone. You have NO "right" to
determine what others "should" enjoy or disagree...despite an
insistence that you wish to dictate.

The FCC makes on-off keying CW mode OPTIONAL to U.S. radio
amateurs. Yet the morse code test remains a NON-option for any
amateur license class having below-30-MHz transmitting privileges.
That is logically incompatible.

If the morse code test "must" stay, then the optionality of on-off
keying morse code mode should be removed. If the option of using
on-off keying remains, the morse code test should be removed.

To paraphrase Apollo 13 Flight Director Gene Kranz, "Option is not
a failure."

LHA