Amateur Radio Report Card

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W2NSD!1
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never say diet
The Docket
There is, I am relieved to report, growing
pressure to have the FCC put 15928 aside
until some sort of study can be made of the
whole situation. You can help this movement
by sending a Jetter to the FCC requesting that
15928 be killed outright or that the time for
filing comments on 15928 be extended for six
more months. It will not hurt one bit if you
send this letter via your own personal Senator
or Congressman so that he can include a little
note of his own when forwarding it to the
FCC. The deadline for such a note is July
30th, so you'd better get going.
We've got major troubles fellows, and we're
going to have to pull a strain to get out of
them. We've got the FCC against us for one
thing . . . and that's bad. Even worse, we've
got the ARRL against us. That doesn't leave
us much, does it?
I can hear you now . . . there goes W ayne
Green running down the ARRL again. Who
the heck does he think he is? OK, let me tell
you who Wayne Green is and what he knows.
My ham career started out in Brooklyn almost
30 years ago. I was a teenager on roller skates
and I visited every active ham that I could
find in Brooklyn ... I still run into those old
Updating the R-S-T reparts .
R means readibility.
R-l to R-4 Unreadable
R5 Readable with difficulty
armcha ir copy
to
5 means sig nal strength.
5-0 to 58 Too weak to copy or too
S9
much QRM to copy
59-plus Readab le with difficu lty
Reasonably readable
to thunderous signa l
signa l
T means tone .
T-O to T8
T9
T9X
Pu lses Dr raw ac note
Rough note o r bad chirp
Anything from absolutely
pe rfect sig nal to one COmplete
wi th chirps, thumps,
clicks, a bit of hum, buzz,
porosi ties, etc.
timers on the air who remember my visits.
1 got my ticket in 1940 ... was active on
160-40-IO-2' ~ meters . . . won the 55 contest
for my section in 1941 and was extremely
active right up to and including December
7th. No one can bullalo me about the ole
days . .. 1 was there . .. I know what the
hams then knew . .. how little they knew . .
how they built rigs from the Handbook anc
Radio, b ut had to call in one of the loca
"experts" when a 6C5 crystal oscillator
wouldn't perk. Sure there were a few comple:
rigs, but most of the gang were strugglim
with their 6L6 oscillator modulated by a 6L6
Don't hand me any gull about the technica
level of the old timers .. . 1 was one ... ani
I knew the rest of them.
The ABBL in BM-499 claimed that they h ac
detected that we have been going down hil
and apparently they have convinced the FCC
of this too. My response to 499 was a Jette:
asking the ARRL to give any facts they hac
to support their claim that something w a,
wrong with amateur radio. They did not an
swer my request . . . they can't answer it fo
there are no facts to prove this fallacy. On tho
contrary, all the facts indicate that ham radk
is b etter and more valuable than it ha
ever been.
Let me get down to brass tacks. One of th.
biggest complaints we've been hearing is abou
"appliance operators:' OK, I'm an appliane
operator . . . my rig is a transceiver, com
mercially made, even my antenna and towe
are commercial products. I don't see any rea
son to spend the time and ellort needed b
build a transmitter today any more than tho
hams of 30 years ago saw any need for build
ing their receivers. But 1 do build my RTT~
converters and whip up anything else specia
that I need . Between the VHF gang . . . tak.
a look at the July VHF issue of 73 again an.
see for yourself, the surplus users ... see ou
June issue, the BTTY gang, the TV gang, an.
a dozen or so other gangs ... plus the fellow
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73 MAGAZIN