At 3:33 PM +0000 27/12/06, Barry wrote: >CW will die a slow death, at least in the US. The no-code license is a dead >end. It will be the rare no-coder that takes the time and effort to learn CW >and stick with it long enough to become proficient for on the air use (i.e., >25-30 WPM.) As we OFs get older and disappear, nobody will be taking our >place on the CW bands. >
I agree. If CW is gonna go down, it's gonna take a long time. As long as there are people who like to be a little different, like to stand out in a crowd, like to have a skill few others will or can master, and walk tall because of all this, CW will live. Case in point: I have an 83ish gentleman in my Tech course. Now that code is no longer required, he insisted on learning it so that he might take the code exam (Element 1) before it is no longer offered. The VE session is on 13 January. I gave him the code on Saturday. His code speed is already up to two or three words per minute just from monitoring CW on 20m. This guy is 90% deaf, barely hobbles to get around, but his brain is in overdrive. Industry Canada (IC) has the right idea. A passed code test at 5wpm will give a licensee "Basic With Honours" for HF operation in lieu of passing the Basic test at 80% or higher to gain access to the HF bands. Code is also required for CEPT (Class I) licenses and for IARP (Class I) permits. -- 73 de Fred Stevens K2FRD, VO2FS http://homepage.mac.com/k2frd/K2FRD.html Subscribe/unsubscribe, feedback, FAQ, problems http://njdxa.org/dx-chat To post a message, DX related items only, [email protected] This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org
