[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Trawlerman

I'm licensed as M0NNT but hardly use it. Passed my 12wpm in '91 and have yet to use it in anger. Did it just for the sheer hell of it.

Was big into ham radio back in the mid 90s but like garry, I got fed up of the back tabbing, shit slinging, and pure snobbishness between license grades. I guess the old boys network got what they wanted - The bands to themselves. Pity most of the old buggers are dead now.

IMHO, the internet killed off most of the hobby.

I read Gary's (ex-N8NBF) opinions on the state of ham radio some time ago, and agree with most if not all of them. The General-Technician snobbery has been going on for years, unfortunately, and may never end. The so-called "good ol' boys network" is, as you say, mostly gone today, as most of the original old-timers in ham radio are now SK (silent keys, as this country's ARRL refers to them). Today's hams do not care for CW, for the most part, preferring instead to use non-code modes such as RTTY, PSK31, SSB, FM, etc. In fact, the FCC is planning to eliminate the Morse code requirement for all amateur licenses (Canada already has, as I read in The ARRL Letter on the Internet a few days ago). The present Morse requirement is 5 wpm for all grades of amateur license (Technician, General, even Extra--the last used to require passage of a 20 wpm code test, and the General class used to be 13 wpm, as it was when I took my General exams over 20 years ago). A sad state of affairs in ham radio, I know--but what can anyone do about it? The ARRL is supposed to stand up for the hams' rights, but I don't see them so much as batting an eye at the FCC's proposal to eliminate the code requirement. IMO, if this keeps up much longer, our amateur bands are going to disintegrate into little more than high-power CB bands.

I've had an amateur license since 1972 (33 years) and was quite active from then until 1999. I moved to an apartment late that year and am now forced to use an indoor antenna for my HF rig and 2 meters. I am a member of the ARRL and a local ham club; I use the latter's 2-meter repeater a lot since my HF rig doesn't seem to work very well (the best I can do on 40-meter SSB at this point is 20 miles directly across the county in which I live). I worked a lot of CW where I lived before moving to where I am now; however, if I try to use my rig on CW here it trips the ground fault interrupters in my apartment, even if I transmit on very low power (20 watts).

That puts me pretty much right back where I started 33 years ago (except I didn't have the GFCI problem back then). I don't intend to give up, but the problems I'm having frustrate me quite a bit, to the point where I don't use my HF rig much anymore. No TVI problems (everyone in my apartment building, myself included, has cable--outdoor TV antennas aren't allowed here, and rabbit ears don't work well because of the sheer distance from here to the seven TV stations in Cleveland--40+ miles), but as I said, I can't get a signal past the county line, let alone out of the state of Ohio where I live. Maybe if I tried other bands, like 30, 20, 17, 15, 12 meters (I worked CW quite a bit on 30 meters from my former residence) I'll have better luck with making contacts. I may not stay out of the GFCIs on CW, but SSB doesn't seem to bother them at all, so perhaps I'll try the latter on 20 thru 12 meters one of these days (SSB is not allowed on 30 meters in the United States, and my antenna is not designed for use on 80 or 75 meters).

As to your opinion that the Internet is "killing" ham radio, I agree with you one hundred percent, although I really shouldn't talk about that as I use my computer on the Internet much, much more these days than I am on 2 meters with the local radio club (though I do participate in a weekly ragchew net our club has on their 2-meter repeater at 7:00 p. m. U. S. Eastern Standard Time or 14:00 UTC). The Internet is more appealing to young people, especially, since many youngsters are computer whizzes in this day and age (many children today know more about the Internet at the age of nine--no kidding--than do their parents). This may be exactly why we don't see more young people getting amateur licenses. Perhaps now that the FCC is proposing to abolish the code requirement for all U.S. ham tickets, that situation may change eventually, but in my heart I doubt it. The written test will still be as tough as ever (55 questions, with a 74 percent score being passing). Most youngsters hate the idea of studying their schoolwork, let alone for something like a radio license test.

Amateur radio in this country is changing for the worse, like it or not. (I don't blame you for not using your license, or Gary for letting his expire.) I don't know what the situation is on the amateur bands where you are, but here in the United States the Amateur Radio Service, as our FCC refers to it, is, IMHO, in trouble and may be in shambles before we know it. No code test eventually, with the written test the only thing distinguishing the amateur service from Citizens Band--this is definitely not the same Amateur Radio Service I knew when I started in the hobby. What's next, for crying out loud? I can only hope the FCC won't abolish amateur licenses as they did CB permits (the agency has not issued the latter for over twenty years); if they do decide to stop issuing ham radio licenses as well, turning all our ham bands into kilowatt Citizens Band clones, we will know for sure that the hobby has gone to the dogs--permanently. Witness the mess the 11-meter U.S. Citizens Band is today after the FCC ceased issuing licenses for the service. Now everyone and his/her brother (or so it seems) is on 11 meters (as I've heard on the general-coverage receiver in my Icom IC725 ham rig), clobbering each others' signals, talking about anything and everything under the sun (including stuff I don't wish to mention here), and making a general shambles of what was once a very orderly communications service. I can only hope amateur radio doesn't follow the same road to utter ruin.

73,

Jeff Strieble, WB8NHV (mailto: [email protected])
Fairport Harbor, Ohio USA (33 miles east of Cleveland, Ohio)
Facsimile: 216-274-9513