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Larry Larry is offline
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First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 5,275
Default FCC drops morse code requirement for all HAM licenses

Tom Francis wrote in
:

Frankly, I'm sorry to see Morse bite dust - high speed Morse sent by
hand is my favorite mode of communication.



Noone has said anything about ELIMINATING CW....only CW TESTING, which
has kept some very nice, but dyslexic, people off ham radio to its
detriment for decades, which was stupid. It was used as a punishment
weapon and deterrent to prevent new hams from becoming licensed without
this "trial by fire" nonsense. The old farts at ARRL who kept the candle
burning at the FCC offices for so many years wanted the bands for
themselves. That's why 20 wpm Extra Class was invented, to reserve the
best DX bands for the select few...most of whom never took a CW test but
were grandfathered in. They're dead now, so life can move on...

As CW has been used as a phone jamming device for so many years, under
the guise of "we didn't hear you with our narrow band filters", I do wish
we'd move one step further up the food chain and confine CW operation to
the bottom 50 Khz of each band, so it no longer poses a nuisance to phone
and data operations. Enough is more than enough.

60 Meters Ham Channels -
http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/reg....html#thirteen
General Class licensed boating hams should install these new "channels"
into their opened-up marine radios and go read the ARRL's comments about
their operation. 5 Mhz is a great band to operate, especially at night
at sea. Power limit also favors your boat because it was limited to 50
watts ERP (Effective Radiated Power). Any untuned boat antenna with the
awful lossy tuner and a 150 watt transmitter is in NO danger of going
over 50W ERP. ONLY USB voice is permitted...no CW, no data, no Pactor
email, no 10KW rich guy with the 800' tower and massive antenna arrays
and ham radio is SECONDARY to the government's use of these channels,
which I doubt government will ever use again, except in emergencies when
they'll want all those hams using them to help out...the reason they
allowed us to use them. Being ham frequencies, you don't need a guilt
trip chatting with the "Lazy B" about the last party on some controlled
marine channel with someone bitching at you to shut up.

Being channelized, marine radios are perfect for USB operation on these
channels. 60 meters should really make a nice boat ham radio
frequency....for a marine net or just a bunch of friends who want to
talk.....(c;

Larry

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17 and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the
name of the beast, or the number of his name...