Currently, there are approximately three quarters of a million licensed Hams 
in the United States

73

Howard #3


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Phil Scovell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2014 11:34 PM
Subject: What CW Isn't


>I never figure the code made somebody a better operator but when I was a
> novice in 1966, I read somewhere there were about 150,000 licensed hams.
> What are there now?  I read sometime back there were 450,000 hams in the U 
> S
> alone and something like 2 million in Japan or something like that.  Of
> course, we didn't have satellite communications back then and CW was a
> requirement for emergency communications nationally.  With sats and cell
> phones, that's not so important any longer but look at those places after
> tornadoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes.  Cell phones are worthless then 
> but
> battery and generator powered ham stations still work pretty good.  I used
> to love to listen to the CW operators aboard ship talking to each other or
> to land based operators but that's long gone, too.  75 meters, and to some
> degree 20 meters, have always had operators of bad behavior.  The side 
> band
> wars on 75 back in the early and mid sixties between SSB and A M operators
> who never wanted to change were amazing.  I hear groups even on 20 side 
> band
> today with 5 to 10 guys in the group, all friends apparently, who won't
> acknowledge a new comer or if they do, they make fun of whatever it is he
> wants; usually just to join their conversation.  That's one thing you 
> don't
> often hear on the CW bands, haha.  Too much work to yell at somebody who 
> can
> filter you right out.  One night, when I had my 40 meter 2 element beam, 
> two
> Mexicans SSB guys were sitting right on 7002 and they both were really 
> loud
> and taking up all the 5 KHz of the bottom of the band.  A guy, who is
> probably passed away now, had a 5 element beam in California so he was a 
> big
> gun on 40 meters.  These X E stations, at least one of them anyhow, were
> about 40 over S9 here in Colorado.  I heard this W6, I forget the rest of
> his call, but his name was Sam I think, try, using CW of course, to get
> those guys to move out of the bottom of the band.  Of course, they paid no
> attention to him so I called CQ on top of them and this W6 answered me and
> we talked for about 10 minutes on CW, our beams pointed right at them,
> before they finally moved.  Did you know that many countries haven't ever
> required a CW test at all?  The Mexico signals are loud even on 75 side 
> band
> here in Denver and through the southwest so sometimes that amp and big
> antenna comes in handy.
>
> Phil.
> K0NX
>



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