[rescue] Re: Ham license question...

[Robert Novak]

On Wed, 6 Jun 2001, Bill Bradford wrote:

> Actually the worldwide radio organization will adopt a resolution that
> it suggests that morse, or at least no more than 5wpm, not be required to
> have an amateur radio license - but this will not necessisarily change
> the US rules/regulations.  I highly doubt that the code requirement
> (5wpm) for General and/or Extra will go away.

Yeah, considering the fact that the last restructuring completely
destroyed ham radio (to believe what a noisy part of the community ranted
on for months), I don't know that the CW requirement will go away without
a fight. 
	Somehow ham radio still exists, and I wouldn't feel a loss if the
cw requirement moved up the ladder or went away. Maybe with more people
using the HF bands, we wouldn't be at so much risk of losing them to
commercial use--I bet the Freedom Network people on 3950 or thereabouts
know CW and still can't play well with others. :)

I got from 0 to 7-8wpm in 5 days with the help of friends on my local
repeater and the Morse Academy program on my PC. Now, 18 months later, I
can still tell that the default SMS tone on a Nokia 5000/6000 phone is the
morse code for SMS, but couldn't copy real code to save my Ultra 1
(obSunReference :) ).

--Rob

-- 
Robert Novak, Indyramp Consulting * rnovak at indyramp.com * indyramp.com/~rnovak
        "And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
           Maybe this year will be better than the last...." -- counting crows