"Keith" wrote in
ps.com:

From ARRL Headquarters
Newington CT December 16, 2006


After obstructing joining the rest of the planet in bringing ham radio
into the 20th (not 21st) century, always trying to roll back the clock to
1929 by staunchly opposing every type of modulation scheme ever invented
(AM, SSB, RTTY, ASCII, Packet, AMTOR/SITOR, Pactor, PSK31, etc.), the
magazine bureaucrats at ARRL must be having some kind of funeral wake for
their idea of what they tried, quite successfully for many, many years,
to block.

I've been a ham since 1957. I was 11 and not into its politics for many
years. I do remember W2NSD/1, Wayne Green fighting ARRL bureaucrats and
getting Radio Teletype (RTTY) approved. I remember them telling us SSB
would be the end of ham radio when I was a teenager.

I'm very proud to say I was the first full ASCII teletype station to
transmit it in the 4th Call District, having been calling CQ for 15
seconds before midnight with a bunch of other ASCII nut cases the day it
became legal. We were already on the air, daring to cross over the line
above 14.100 Mhz into the precious "Canadian Phone Band" the ARRL and
CRRL didn't want us to use by restricting phone priviledges of US
amateurs above 14.200. Code and RTTY were legal but ARRL told us all
never to stray into Canada's private ham band, a stupid gentlemen's
agreement. You can still hear the results of our daring foray into
Jammerland by listening to the Packet ASCII stations above 14.100 that
are still on the air, today. Our frequency was 14.110 Mhz for the
initial QSOs on simplex ASCII at 110 baud, as fast as they'd let us go
for a time before raising it to 300 baud once FCC determined the sky
wouldn't fall at such breakneck speeds....and FCC finally got more than
ASCII teletype machines so they could copy us at faster rates...(c;

I've waited just a hair under 50 years for this day.....a proud day for
ham radio and the thousands of code victims whos dyslexia kept really
nice people off ham radio, just because a bunch of old ARRL fogies tried
to keep the bands for themselves.

Congratulations, ham radio. I hope it isn't too little - too late.

It's been a helluva ride!

Larry W4CSC aka KN4IM aka WB4THE aka WN2IWH....God I'm OLD! How awful.
No, I don't wanna join QCWA. I'm not THAT old!