[Leica] [WAS sweet barking cheese!] NOW OT--Why ham radio code is like a Leica

[hlritter at bex.net (Howard Ritter)]

Marc--


> About 60% of ham traffic is passed in CW (Morse Code) if not more.

I don't know whether your statistic is right or not (hard to define  
"percent of traffic"), but I think this is a vast overestimate. At  
any one time I think there are many more voice contacts ("'phone  
QSOs") in progress than CW. Certainly there are many more ops who use  
'phone exclusively or predominantly than there are CW ops.


> The Federal Communications Commission simply removed the requirment  
> for (I believe) an ability to transmit eight words per minute in  
> Morse Code from the requirement for a license.

The requirement was for 5 WPM. When I was first licensed, there was a  
5 WPM requirement for the Novice Class license, later ditto for  
Technician class, 13 WPM for General and Advanced Classes, and 20 WPM  
for Extra Class. There was a requirement under international  
agreement for countries to require code proficiency as a condition of  
being granted a license. This requirement was dropped some years ago,  
and the FCC is now following suit.


> But most amatuer short-wave operators will have to know how to deal  
> with CW if they want to talk at all on the air.  Fortunately, there  
> are freeby decoder programs available for the computer literate.

Well, in a word, no--on both counts. The great majority of amateur  
operators don't use CW, although all of us had to know it at the time  
of our licensing exams. Most of us go straight to 'phone and never  
look back. This is a shame, as CW is classy, clean, bandwidth- 
efficient, and elegant, as well as being far and away the best (non- 
computer assisted) mode for communicating through poor propagation  
conditions and noisy bands. In a way, CW is to 'phone as an M3 with  
Tri-X and a Leicameter--better yet, a Horseman--is to a digital P&S.  
No one at all "needs" CW to communicate; one only needs another  
'phone operator on-band, and there are tens of thousands, far more  
than CW-only ops.

As for code-translating computer programs, yes, they are available,  
but not widely used by ham operators even to listen, and by  
essentially no one to actually carry out a QSO; I don't think a CW op  
would willingly conduct a QSO with an "appliance operator" reading  
and generating CW by computer. You may be thinking of some very  
elegant indeed freeware programs that link a computer to a  
transceiver to enable communication by a variety of very  
sophisticated digital modes. But the craft of proficient CW operation  
is held in such esteem that its very human origins are respected to  
the point that the mode is mostly held to be off-limits to anything  
but the human "fist" and ear.

>
> Marc


--howard
(N7EXN)