I am addressing this issue from the point of view of the
holder of an Extra Class license.  I did the twenty word per
minute test and passed it the first time because that is what one
had to do in 1988.  I also flunked the theory test at that time
which is exactly the opposite of what I expected to do that day.

        I got the study material from HandiHams and fixed that
little problem a few months later so I have climbed the mountain
clear to the top.

        Now for the reality.  The present situation doesn't
bother me one bit.  Morse Code does not build character.  The
long-term effort to achieve something worth while does tend to
build character although there are no guarantees of such.

        Remember The Edmond Post Office murders of 1986?  That
guy happened to have an Extra Class license, I am pretty sure.
This is due to his 2-letter call sign and the time in which he
held it.

        Several other Extras have been involved in various forms
of malicious mischief over the years and I believe that at least
some of them probably learned CW at twenty WPM and passed their
theory with flying colors.

        Character is one thing and knowledge is quite another.
The world is full of people who have one and totally lack the
other.  People with lots of knowledge and no character are scary
because they don't have that little voice in their head to stop
them from using their knowledge destructively.

        Amateur radio is about knowledge and character.  We are
supposed to use our communications knowledge to help society when
unusual situations occur.

        We need to have current knowledge of how present-day
communications systems work.  Nobody is suggesting outlawing CW,
only that it should no longer be a requirement for earning an
amateur license.  How many of you know what Gaussian Mean Shift
Keying is?  What is the meaning of the Niquist frequency? How
does Linear Predictive Coding work?

        Now I don't claim to know the correct answers to all
those questions, but they are quite relevant to all kinds of
voice and data communications today.  Oh yes, and don't forget to
learn how a successive approximation analog to digital converter
works at least well enough to use it in a circuit.

        My point is that the amateur radio exams are about to
sprout a whole new crop of questions, some of which may sound a
lot like the ones I just asked.  You will need to know about
digital logic and communications protocols to be a modern expert
as well as the traditional amateur radio rules and regulations.

        This is a democracy and debating the changing history of
our hobby is necessary to keep it on track.  As long as we don't
get in to religious wars and start calling names, this is good.

        CW is a wonderful thing.  I like to sit and listen to a
good signal for a while just to copy the message, but I am not as
bothered by the changing requirements as I am by those who won't
learn the new technologies and at least read about how they work.

        Such things as voice over IP and data compression schemes
are all things that we may run in to or have to attempt to debug
in this day and age.

        Oh yes, for the record, I don't know much about Gaussian
Mean shift keying except that it is a mathematically-based method
for distributing binary data such that there is an even
distribution of ones and zeros.  This causes radio transmitters to
not stay on either the mark or space condition for long periods
of time.

        The niquist frequency has to do with digital sampling and
is based on the fact that it takes at least two samples to define
a wave form.  This means that your digital audio sampling must be
at least twice the frequency as the  highest audio frequency you
expect to encounter.

        Linear predictive coding is another thing I know very
little about except that it is a method of using digital signal
analysis to break audio down in to its frequency and amplitude
components.  Those values are transmitted over the air to a
system which reverses the process and ends up with fairly close
to the original audio once again.  The advantage is that one can
transmit audio at a fraction of the band-width required to send
straight PCM or pulse code modulation.
The disadvantage is that it sounds weird at times.  I think some
cell phone technology uses LPC as well as a host of computer toys
such as the Texas Instruments Speak and Spell not to mention many
telephone answering machines who try to cram as much audio as
possible in to as little memory as possible.

        Well, 73's for now.

Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK
OSU Center for Computing and Information Services Network Operations Group

Jed Barton writes:
>Hey gang.
>OK, here's my take on the CW.  We should keep the 5 words a minute.  This
>is crazy that they are trying to get rid of it.
>It is an open invitation for the 11 meter people to just come on to HF.  I
>have a major problem with that.