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the 20's and 30's the phone transmitters were
considerably more expensive than CW rigs
and a lot more difficult to tune, with t he result
that most amateur operation was via CWo
But, as soon as phone was available the hams
started using it and the percentage of phone
ops grew steadily. Most operators preferred
to talk rather than whistle and they changed
to phone as soon as they co uld afford it.
Sideband completely broke the back of
th e CW holdouts. Their complaints that CW
could get through better than phone or that a
CWrig was much less expensive th an a pho ne
rig fell apart. Side band, t hey fo und, could
get through just about any time that CW
co uld! And the Heath $99 SSB transceiver
forever stilled co mplaints about cost.
There are sti ll a sizable number of ops that
use CW because they enjoy using it, but few,
except Novices, use Cw out of necessity. With
the percentage of CW operation dropping
year by year, many have wondered just why
the FCC added the 20 wp m requirement to
the Extra Class license.
Modern communications techniques would
see m to put emphasis on things like RTTY,
facsimile, slow scan television, narrow band
television, ti me sharing of channels, and other
developments rather than harking back to
our early days and our most primative mode.
The FCC, to the contrary, has been decidedly
backwards in handing down favorable rules
for RTTY, facsimile, television, etc. Amateur
development of these modes has been harassed
and impeded by the FCC rather than
helped , as per (c).
Part (d) calls for trained operators, technicians
and electronic experts. We are concentrating
more on trained o perators these
days than technicians. But, with some
10,000 of us active on the VHF's and a similar
nu mber working wit h RTTY and other
advanced modes of co mmunications, we are
not doing too badly in the expert department.
Good will? With phone contacts as simple
as they arc today tens of thousands o f OX
operators can talk and make friends with fellows
aU over the world. A few simpletons
yelling break-break, or calling doggedly on a
OX frequency can create ill will, but for the
most part, ham radio is a friendly world community.
A recent report of the Stanford Research
organization showed that , dollar for
dollar, radio amateurs achieve more good
will t~an short wave broadcasting...by a large
margin.
We might try to curb our penchant for donating
money to DXpeditions too . These
often bring terrible ill will for us from ahroad.
The big problem is this : since the DXer is
doing the job for money . he is very apt to
by-pass a lot of formalities and tread heavily
on toes in order to get on the air. Onc DXer
went into Jordan a few years back and went
on the air without a proper lice nse. The result
was that ham rad io was fin ished there
from then on.
All in all , when you look over the FCC basis
and purpose for amateur radio, we see m
to still, in spite of all the changes that have
come about" be well wort h our salt. Perhaps
those that are calling for a return to building
should take a look at the balance sheet.
My own feeling is that building equipment
is a lot of fun and I intend to run every construction
project in 73 that I can get my
hands on. Of course, I will tend towards
pushin g the newer modes such as TV, RITY,
SSTV, FAX, FM , and the like . We have a
thousand or so hams that spend their hobby
hours bu ilding equipment. Few of them ever
get on the air for more than a sho rt test of a
new unit. .. then the parts go back into the
junk box and the next project is underway.
These are the fellows who provide us with
most of the original co nstructio ns articles...
this is why yo u keep seeing the same calls
over and over in 73.
It is important for us to do everything we
can to see that we co nstantly have new amateurs
enteri ng the hobby. A certain percentage
of th ese newcomers will turn out to be
builders...others will go for new modes...and
a very few will get some sort of weird idea
for a rad ical cha nge and spend years working
on it...and they just might succeed. I am
reasonably sure that it wo n't be long until
someone makes a giga ntic breakthrough into
another form of communications which will
make radio obsolete. It co uld well be o ne of
the Novices who will get his ticket this fall.
What do you think?
...Way ne
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