Amateur licenses increasing in numbers?

[kd7rto]

CW tests never were an effective means of keeping bad operators out, their value to us were in keeping our heritage alive.

In the glory days of amateur radio, we were the innovators of technology. Now, professional engineers fill that role. We've been relegated to a position of being a quirky group of elderly men and boy scouts, who tinker with antiques.

Before the microphone, wireless communication was a skill possessed by a small, special, segment of society. Today, texting on a cellphone is childsplay.

We can't go back, but we could have preserved a piece of living history, by ensuring hams would continue to be proficient in our venerable original mode. Sadly, those who represent us chose a course akin to tearing down Colonial Williamsberg, to make room for a strip mall.

 

[N1SQB]

CW tests never were an effective means of keeping bad operators out, their value to us were in keeping our heritage alive.

In the glory days of amateur radio, we were the innovators of technology. Now, professional engineers fill that role. We've been relegated to a position of being a quirky group of elderly men and boy scouts, who tinker with antiques.

Before the microphone, wireless communication was a skill possessed by a small, special, segment of society. Today, texting on a cellphone is childsplay.

We can't go back, but we could have preserved a piece of living history, by FORCING hams TO continue to be proficient in our ANCIENT, OUTDATED, original mode. Sadly, those who represent us chose a course akin to tearing down Colonial Williamsberg, to make room for a strip mall.

This is how your statement was interpreted by the majority of the non-code Hams prior to the dropping of the code REQUIREMENT. The last word was the key issue with most non-code Hams. REQUIREMENT. Morse code should have been left the way it is now, optional. The you-must-do-it-becauce-I-had-to-do-it mentality was, is, and always will be wrong.


Manny

 

[IowaBrian]

Well we had 24 show up Saturday for testing and I believe out of that 11 were new Hams like myself.
Half of the new Hams were under 15 I would guess. That is a good thing getting the kids off the cell phone and video games and into radio science. Just my $.02

Brian

 

[zz0468]

We've been relegated to a position of being a quirky group of elderly men and boy scouts, who tinker with antiques.

Speak for yourself. many of us are engaged in state-of-the-art activities and construction, moonbounce on ever higher and higher frequencies, new digital modes, computer controlled radios, and linked repeaters that cover multiple states.

All of my circuit designs and construction are now done using SMT techniques, and my home lab is capable of measurements from DC to 40 GHz. Antiques? I tinker with those, too. I have about 50 antique radios scattered throughout the house.

That's not meant as a bragging session, it's meant to convey that the hobby is whatever you want to make of it. And from my perspective, it ain't dying, and it ain't populated by a bunch of crusty old dinosaurs in the basement nursing 50 year old MOPA rigs.

We can't go back, but we could have preserved a piece of living history, by ensuring hams would continue to be proficient in our venerable original mode. Sadly, those who represent us chose a course akin to tearing down Colonial Williamsberg, to make room for a strip mall.

The history is being preserved. But that doesn't require that the entire hobby be held back. Those who like the historical aspects of it, including CW and AM can practice their art. And they do.