The biggest disadvantage would be narrowing down the percentage of people
on
the other end that would be able to decipher your emergency message.

If you are calling for help, you want as many people on the receiving end
of
your transmission to be able to UNDERSTAND your message as possible.

The emergency broadcast system (now the EAS) works on English Voice, NOT
with
morse code. And it is designed to be used in an emergency. Same
with
police, fire and ambulance radios.

Imagine the president addressing the public with a morse code key.
Might as
well talk to a wall.



In emergencies hams are NOT broadcasting to the public.

In an emergency anyone is broadcasting to ANYONE that is listening. If you
think a ham or anyone else in an emergency is not going to want a non-ham to
help, or will refuse to deal with a non-ham you are crazy.

In an emergency you can even use frequencies and radios at your access that you
would not normally be licensed to operate on. We are talking about
EMERGENCIES here. No time to waste playing morse code or taking the time to
pound out a cry for help one letter at a time in a mode that only ends up
sounding like silly beeps to most of the people listening on the other end that
would otherwise be hearing your cry for help.

Next time you are stranded in your car and need a tow, why don't you call on
your cell phone and punch our your problem in morse code with the touch tone pad
and see how fast you are able to get any assistance. Your call for assistance
will be taken as a prank phone call and they will hang up on you and you will
remain stranded until you decide to talk into the microphone so that someone can
hear and understand your message.

Common sense folks. You can pretend to say otherwise here on this newsgroup,
but when the real emergency arises, the last thing on your mind will be playing
with morse code! Then see how fast you can use a microphone and your voice!

They are using
their skills to pass messages from the public and emergency services to the
public and emergency services via the ham network. No has to be able to
understand the message while it is in transit except the hams.

MOST hams don't understand morse code either! The no-code tech class has
outnumbered the other license classes for years, and those that did learn the
code only did so to pass the test and many never used it after the test. (like
myself and all my ham friends)

Send code to us and it will be nothing more than beep beep beep beep. I
remember SOS and the letter R for some reason (probably since most repeaters end
with R on their id) but that won't tell me where you are or what the problem
is. Unless you talk to us, you can consider yourself dead in an emergency.

Thus hams
can and will use any means at their disposal appropriate to the situation,
that includes voice,

It sure does.