I have a "use for CW". I use it to communicate with others using the same
mode. I use it to participate in Amateur Radio.

If you or your ilk don't care to do so. Stay the hell off my frequency.

Have a good day idiot.

Dan/W4NTI

"John Smith" wrote in message
...
You ask me "what is wrong with cw?" I ask you, "Why is amateur radio
dying?"--I think the answer to both is a single one--there was a time when
dropping code would have saved ham radio--I fear that time has come and
gone... cw has no real use to anyone, anymore... it is like having to
learn to type to use the internet... no such requirement... however,
because typing DOES have a use--you will find many learning to type after
they realize the need...

... the "anateur exams" are certainly no hinderence, they always have been
as simple as pie--a college grad trained in the art of "test taking" could
study for a day and pass the most challenging... they have been made even
simplier still... yet amateur radio declined and continues to do so--

... now "critical mass" has been reached, so many other forms of
communication exist that amateur radio is on its' death march... radios
are so far and few between... and so little demand... they are too
expensive with most to bother with... you could give ham licences away in
the streets and not improve that...

... no, the OMs' alzheimers and lack of ability to see the future has
killed ham radio--you'd think the old guys must have hated it--to have
stood by and watched it die--if what you say is correct--and they DID have
all their mental facilities about them and still allowed it...

Warmest regards,
John

"Jim Hampton" wrote in message
...
Nice try, John

In the original post I stated "just for grins".

As far as Alzheimer's disease, I know the change I am due before the kid
punches the cash tendered into the register. I had to chuckle one day
when
the gal punched in as though I had made exact change and had to figure
out
what my change was. She had to call a manager!

I am familiar with how great the Internet is and surf a bit plus am
active
in several Yahoo groups. Do you remember 911? I lost my AT&T service
for a
week as they had some central switching station in there. I had to use
my
Juno account as a backup. The radios, however, work - even without
mains.
Come to think of it, some of the repeaters work without mains. There are
two of them around here that aren't even connected to the mains!

I have no axe to grind. Oh, it bothers me when a couple of high power
stations are talking across town on 20 meters, however there is no sanity
test for an amateur license. Come to think of it, the same applies to
high
power CBs. It causes interference thousands of miles away.

What I cannot understand is why so many folks get their panties in a knot
over CW. If you enjoy it, use it; if not, don't. No big deal there.

As far as the folks who love to condemn those who enjoy Morse, I suspect
that many of them are also lacking in theory and really want a no test
ticket. Perhaps we could also do away with a test for a driver's license
as
well ....

Granted, folks will point out there is a big difference. There is, but
the
underlying problem is trying to make the airwaves available for
*everyone*.
This includes cell-phones (think duplex walk-talkie connected to a
repeater
which is connected to the telephone company), radio, television, aircraft
guidance systems, satellite tv, satellite radio, gps, and so much more.
Originally, there were no driver's licenses, but as more automobiles came
about, there was a need for regulation. Should we get rid of traffic
lights? How about the flashing red lights on school busses? Think there
might be a need for regulation? The same applies to radio. Originally,
there were no regulations for radio. If you have 100 stations in the
world,
total, there is really no need for regulation. As technology progressed,
there were more demands made for radio spectrum (I say radio, but mean
everything using the electro-magnetic spectrum from perhaps 3 kHz to 300
gHz). Regulations came into being and have been revisited and changed
many
times since.

At least we can discuss this problem with regulating the airwaves; I have
another problem that I am going to have to "discuss" a different way.

Our new chief of police is claiming he is going to start cracking down on
the loud stereos. One guy wrote an editorial stating "you just don't
like
my music". Well, I finally got one guy fined and he is staying quiet.
It
is disconcerting, to say the least, when someone has their boom box
turned
up 10 dB above distort at midnight and I have to get up in the morning.
Some of us actually have jobs. I have some "tunes" that I will share
should
this start again. I'm not going to bother burning a cd as I've got the
mp3
cuts on the computer. Just plug an audio line from the headphone jack on
the computer speakers to the 700 stereo system I have for satellite tv.
I
hope they enjoy my tunes:

1) Washington Post March
2) Anchors aweigh
3) The Thunderer
4) The Stars and Stripes Forever (my favorite)

I've got others on CDs. From all of the services. Funny, but I have a
feeling that they will be clamoring for "regulation" all of a sudden )


With all due regards from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA



"John Smith" wrote in message
...
It is a shame that hams are riding a sinking ship to the bottom... just
so
others can't ride... weird really... those old guys really have a axe to
grind with someone... but, maybe it is as they claim--their minds are
gone
to alzheimers and they simply await for the need for morse to return...
however, long before then--amateur radio will be dead...

Regards,
John

"Jim Hampton" wrote in message
...
Hi gang!


Just for some grins, check this out:
http://www.lildobe.net/video/

It will take a bit of time for the folks on dial-up, but it is worth
remembering that those two guys were not setting any speed records.
It
sounded about like the commercial CW circuits on the marine bands I
listened
to about 37 years ago ....

The more things change, the more they stay the same.


73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA

"Michael Coslo" wrote in message
...


Cmd Buzz Corey wrote:

John Smith wrote:

... the "anateur exams" are certainly no hinderence, they always have
been as simple as pie--a college grad trained in the art of "test
taking" could study for a day and pass the most challenging


I think you need to go back and look at the early exams. There was a time
when an applicant was required to actually draw a schematic of various
circuits and explaine how they worked.

Is that supposed to be hard?


And even after the exams became multiple choice type, one had to know the
material to get the correct answer as the answers to the acutal questions
were not available.

Yeah. You'll find that question pool bugaboo in a lot of fields these
days, including fields where if a person makes a mistake because of not
knowing the material, lives may be lost.





There were study guides with sample questions, but no questions pools
with the exact answer available for memorization.

Now if you want *really* hard, make it no study guide, no question pool,
and the applicant has to do all the learning research with NO idea of what
is on the test! 8^)

If you did not know the theory, then you probably weren't going to pass.
Again john smith knows not of what he speaks.

I took the tests from the question pools. For me, they were all pretty
easy. They were not easy because of the question pools. They were easy
because they were fairly basic material.

What I have seen of the earlier test is that they too were pretty basic.
Any difference is not so great that those who came before need not feel
any superiority.


I aced the Technician test with the only study being the safety questions.

I did study a bit for the General.

For the Extra, I spent a week taking the on-line tests. Questions that I
knew the answer to, I got right of course.

Those that I got wrong earned me a trip to the books or online to find out
why I got it wrong. By the time I was finished, I aced the test just about
every time on line, and then in the actual test.

And I knew the material.

Elapsed time, one week.

Now the Morse code was another thing entirely. That was hard.

But then I'm just a dum nickel extra! ;^)

- Mike KB3EIA -


Mike,

I believe what the gentleman was trying to convey is that the present day
tests are a total farce. The answer is readly available and it is just a
"formality" to even pass it.

You said you compaired some of the older tests. Just how far back did you
go? The commenter was obviously refering to those tests given in the 50 and
60. I like to call it the error of "BB" . You know....before Bash. If you
don't know what I am refering to, then you had no right to comment the way
you did.

Have a nice day.

Dan/W4NTI

"KØHB" wrote in message
ups.com...

Jim Hampton wrote:


I'd have responded earlier, but yesterday was my birthday and ....
well, I
probably consumed enough beer to build a 160 meter half wave beer can
vertical


Ah yes, a vertical 'beverage' antenna! Our FD group had one for 20M,
but we had to quit using it when our FD QTH changed to the football
field of a local High School.

Anyhow, Happy Birthday!

73, de Hans, K0HB


Happy B-day guy.

Our club group built a 3 element 160 meter yagi out of steel beer cans for a
Field Day one year.

Dan/W4NTI

"Steveo" wrote in message
...
"Jim Hampton" wrote:
I'd have responded earlier, but yesterday was my birthday and .... well,
I probably consumed enough beer to build a 160 meter half wave beer can
vertical

Fortunately, the better half didn't get upset

73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA

Happy belated B-day, Jim. Many more returns! 160 meter half wave, is
that anything like enough beer to float a battleship? g

Only if it tied to a blivit.

Dan/W4NTI

Dan,

I must ask ... did you rotate the whole county to turn the beam?


73,
Jim AA2QA


"Dan/W4NTI" wrote in message
news

"KØHB" wrote in message
ups.com...

Jim Hampton wrote:


I'd have responded earlier, but yesterday was my birthday and ....
well, I
probably consumed enough beer to build a 160 meter half wave beer can
vertical


Ah yes, a vertical 'beverage' antenna! Our FD group had one for 20M,
but we had to quit using it when our FD QTH changed to the football
field of a local High School.

Anyhow, Happy Birthday!

73, de Hans, K0HB


Happy B-day guy.

Our club group built a 3 element 160 meter yagi out of steel beer cans for
a
Field Day one year.

Dan/W4NTI

wrote in message
ups.com...
Jim Hampton wrote:
"KØHB" wrote in message
nk.net...
One interesting thing of note - text messaging I'd consider
similar to cw in one thing - it may be fun, but not highly
useful.

I disagree!

They're both highly useful. Just in different ways.

If one
needs to send a lot of text, a computer and the Internet just
might be
considerably faster (assuming one can touch type at a
reasonable rate).

Of course! But then you need a readout device.

Usefulness depends on the application.

Via
radio, there are digital modes, of course, and text can be
reliably sent
much faster with many of the digital modes (even the very dated
RTTY).

Sure - if someone has the equipment handy.

But the whole digital-mode-faster thing is kind of bogus in my view.
It's like saying that since we have cars, there's no reason to have
competitions where people run anymore. Heck, why doesn't everyone in
the Olympic marathon use rollerblades? The times would drop
dramatically.


I have to chuckle at the length of this thread; I thought it
an interesting
link and figured there would be a couple of cw detractors that
would answer,
but the thread turned out a bit longer than I figured. I keep
forgetting
how heated the cw vs no cw arguement can get.

The telling part is that the anticode folks call the test "rigged"
and other nonsense in an attempt to discredit what happened. But
the plain simple fact is that a couple of good Morse Code
operators, going about 1/3 the world-record speed, were faster
than the *world record holders* in text messaging.

What they missed is that the whole point of the segment was to
show that "newer" isn't always "faster/better/easier" and that
"older" doesn't equal "useless". The outfits on the two teams
were a visual way of adding to that.

One member of the Morse Code team was reportedly at Dayton
in his telegrapher outfit.

I'd have responded earlier, but yesterday was my birthday
and .... well, I
probably consumed enough beer to build a 160 meter half wave
beer can vertical

Hope it was happy. Trouble is they put beer in aluminum cans now...


Hello, Hans


Well, when I was really fairly good at Morse, I copied 40 words per minute
with no errors in Bainbridge, MD in "A" school.

Many folks forget that digital modes (and lets include cw for this one) are
relatively errorless despite numbers and spellings that are difficult.
There are a number of folks that would have problems typing 30 words per
minute, let alone 50 for a really good CW op. A teletype or even the modern
modes aren't going to help (even the Internet) if you can't type well. Some
people think that because they can "cut and paste" or forward a message that
makes them some kind of superior communicator.

The name of the game is to have fun - and, if you are intelligent, be
prepared.

What kind of tuner did you use for that fence (read "antenna") on Saipan?
Man, you were pounding in. Too bad the folks at the receiver site didn't
understand about reducing rf/if gain LOL.


73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA

"Steveo" wrote in message
...
"Jim Hampton" wrote:
I'd have responded earlier, but yesterday was my birthday and ....
well,
I probably consumed enough beer to build a 160 meter half wave beer can
vertical

Fortunately, the better half didn't get upset

73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA

Happy belated B-day, Jim. Many more returns! 160 meter half wave, is
that anything like enough beer to float a battleship? g

Hello, Mopar

No, but my head would have believe do the next day )


73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA

On Sun, 22 May 2005 17:08:37 -0700, John Smith wrote:
: You ask me "what is wrong with cw?" I ask you, "Why is amateur radio
: dying?"--I think the answer to both is a single one--there was a time when

Difficult premise, coupled with a fuzzy definition. What does "dying"
mean to you? If you're going to assert that amateur radio is dying,
then you need to come up with a working definition of "dying" so that
others can decide if you're right.

My problem is that, when I review the statistics, there isn't any such
process which can be clearly identified. True, over the very recent
past the total number of licenses has declined, but that decline is on
the order of 2% since April, 2004. If the baseline is made longer,
and totals going back to 1995 are examined, a 2% change in the total
amateur population is seen to lie well within the noise (two year
variance). It is therefore difficult to decide if it is significant
without resorting to a detailed statistical analysis.

My sense is that it isn't significant (yet). It looks as though the
trend line (least-squares, linear fit) is horizontal, and only
additional time will tell if it really has a negative slope.

To reiterate, those who run around claiming that "amateur radio is
dying" can't seem to either articulate what "dying" means or to prove
their case.

And as the old Shania Twain song says, "That don't impress me much."

.... dream on...

John

"Stagger Lee" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 22 May 2005 17:08:37 -0700, John Smith
wrote:
: You ask me "what is wrong with cw?" I ask you, "Why is amateur radio
: dying?"--I think the answer to both is a single one--there was a time
when

Difficult premise, coupled with a fuzzy definition. What does "dying"
mean to you? If you're going to assert that amateur radio is dying,
then you need to come up with a working definition of "dying" so that
others can decide if you're right.

My problem is that, when I review the statistics, there isn't any such
process which can be clearly identified. True, over the very recent
past the total number of licenses has declined, but that decline is on
the order of 2% since April, 2004. If the baseline is made longer,
and totals going back to 1995 are examined, a 2% change in the total
amateur population is seen to lie well within the noise (two year
variance). It is therefore difficult to decide if it is significant
without resorting to a detailed statistical analysis.

My sense is that it isn't significant (yet). It looks as though the
trend line (least-squares, linear fit) is horizontal, and only
additional time will tell if it really has a negative slope.

To reiterate, those who run around claiming that "amateur radio is
dying" can't seem to either articulate what "dying" means or to prove
their case.

And as the old Shania Twain song says, "That don't impress me much."

Dan:

You will never find me using cw... you will never finding me talking to
anyone of your ilk... fear not...

John

"Dan/W4NTI" wrote in message
ink.net...
I have a "use for CW". I use it to communicate with others using the same
mode. I use it to participate in Amateur Radio.

If you or your ilk don't care to do so. Stay the hell off my frequency.

Have a good day idiot.

Dan/W4NTI

"John Smith" wrote in message
...
You ask me "what is wrong with cw?" I ask you, "Why is amateur radio
dying?"--I think the answer to both is a single one--there was a time
when dropping code would have saved ham radio--I fear that time has come
and gone... cw has no real use to anyone, anymore... it is like having
to learn to type to use the internet... no such requirement... however,
because typing DOES have a use--you will find many learning to type after
they realize the need...

... the "anateur exams" are certainly no hinderence, they always have
been as simple as pie--a college grad trained in the art of "test taking"
could study for a day and pass the most challenging... they have been
made even simplier still... yet amateur radio declined and continues to
do so--

... now "critical mass" has been reached, so many other forms of
communication exist that amateur radio is on its' death march... radios
are so far and few between... and so little demand... they are too
expensive with most to bother with... you could give ham licences away
in the streets and not improve that...

... no, the OMs' alzheimers and lack of ability to see the future has
killed ham radio--you'd think the old guys must have hated it--to have
stood by and watched it die--if what you say is correct--and they DID
have all their mental facilities about them and still allowed it...

Warmest regards,
John

"Jim Hampton" wrote in message
...
Nice try, John

In the original post I stated "just for grins".

As far as Alzheimer's disease, I know the change I am due before the kid
punches the cash tendered into the register. I had to chuckle one day
when
the gal punched in as though I had made exact change and had to figure
out
what my change was. She had to call a manager!

I am familiar with how great the Internet is and surf a bit plus am
active
in several Yahoo groups. Do you remember 911? I lost my AT&T service
for a
week as they had some central switching station in there. I had to use
my
Juno account as a backup. The radios, however, work - even without
mains.
Come to think of it, some of the repeaters work without mains. There
are
two of them around here that aren't even connected to the mains!

I have no axe to grind. Oh, it bothers me when a couple of high power
stations are talking across town on 20 meters, however there is no
sanity
test for an amateur license. Come to think of it, the same applies to
high
power CBs. It causes interference thousands of miles away.

What I cannot understand is why so many folks get their panties in a
knot
over CW. If you enjoy it, use it; if not, don't. No big deal there.

As far as the folks who love to condemn those who enjoy Morse, I suspect
that many of them are also lacking in theory and really want a no test
ticket. Perhaps we could also do away with a test for a driver's
license as
well ....

Granted, folks will point out there is a big difference. There is, but
the
underlying problem is trying to make the airwaves available for
*everyone*.
This includes cell-phones (think duplex walk-talkie connected to a
repeater
which is connected to the telephone company), radio, television,
aircraft
guidance systems, satellite tv, satellite radio, gps, and so much more.
Originally, there were no driver's licenses, but as more automobiles
came
about, there was a need for regulation. Should we get rid of traffic
lights? How about the flashing red lights on school busses? Think
there
might be a need for regulation? The same applies to radio. Originally,
there were no regulations for radio. If you have 100 stations in the
world,
total, there is really no need for regulation. As technology
progressed,
there were more demands made for radio spectrum (I say radio, but mean
everything using the electro-magnetic spectrum from perhaps 3 kHz to 300
gHz). Regulations came into being and have been revisited and changed
many
times since.

At least we can discuss this problem with regulating the airwaves; I
have
another problem that I am going to have to "discuss" a different way.

Our new chief of police is claiming he is going to start cracking down
on
the loud stereos. One guy wrote an editorial stating "you just don't
like
my music". Well, I finally got one guy fined and he is staying quiet.
It
is disconcerting, to say the least, when someone has their boom box
turned
up 10 dB above distort at midnight and I have to get up in the morning.
Some of us actually have jobs. I have some "tunes" that I will share
should
this start again. I'm not going to bother burning a cd as I've got the
mp3
cuts on the computer. Just plug an audio line from the headphone jack
on
the computer speakers to the 700 stereo system I have for satellite tv.
I
hope they enjoy my tunes:

1) Washington Post March
2) Anchors aweigh
3) The Thunderer
4) The Stars and Stripes Forever (my favorite)

I've got others on CDs. From all of the services. Funny, but I have a
feeling that they will be clamoring for "regulation" all of a sudden )


With all due regards from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA



"John Smith" wrote in message
...
It is a shame that hams are riding a sinking ship to the bottom... just
so
others can't ride... weird really... those old guys really have a axe
to
grind with someone... but, maybe it is as they claim--their minds are
gone
to alzheimers and they simply await for the need for morse to return...
however, long before then--amateur radio will be dead...

Regards,
John

"Jim Hampton" wrote in message
...
Hi gang!


Just for some grins, check this out:
http://www.lildobe.net/video/

It will take a bit of time for the folks on dial-up, but it is worth
remembering that those two guys were not setting any speed records.
It
sounded about like the commercial CW circuits on the marine bands I
listened
to about 37 years ago ....

The more things change, the more they stay the same.


73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA