From: utzoo!decvax!cca!duntemann.wbst@sri-unix
Newsgroups: net.ham-radio
Title: Thoughts on CW
Article-I.D.: sri-unix.4329
Posted: Tue Nov 23 06:18:26 1982
Received: Thu Nov 25 02:50:39 1982

Flames indeed!  I could smell this all coming.  First the techies admit
timidly that they never did like code and think it might not be necessary to
require all hams to learn it.  Then the "spark forever" chaps dive in and
claim that CW is absolutely essential, that it is the most efficient use of
our band space, that it is the necessary "barrier" to keep out throngs of
CBers who would ruin hamming for everybody.  And, yes, a final rejoinder
that CW is fun and should not be done away with altogether.

What was that again?  Do away with it altogethner?  Who said anything
about that?

We were talking about making CW an oPTIOnAL part of ham radio...like,
maybe giving people a choice?  What a peculiar notion...kind of like
giving people a choice as to whether or not they have to join a union
to keep their jobs.  Unions virtually froth at the mouth when such a
thing is suggested, usually claiming that making unions optional is a
plot to "do away with unions altogether."

Funny how making something optional is a plot to do away with it altogether.

Maybe such an assertion is just an aggressive way of admitting that very
few people really WANT CW or labor unions, and that if optional, they
would be pitched over the rail in short order.  Think about it.

Other issues:  CW is the most efficient use of our bandwidth.

Nonsense.  CW buys narrowness of bandwidth at the cost of throughput.
The real measure of band usage efficiency is the quantity of information
passed per second per unit of bandwidth.  Measuring this accurately is
NOT trivial.  I'm not sure it's ever been tried.  I was a novice, and
I worked CW as long as I had to.  I dropped it because it was painfully,
agonizingly slow.  I pondered that speeding it up to the throughput of
a phone signal would probably make it just as wide as a phone signal.
Bandwidth increases as information density increases.  Sorry about that.
The only way to increase band-usage efficiency is to be real tricky--
to pack information into the dead spots, to stop going "um,ahhhh" and
dah didididah, dah didididah, etc.  In short, to use packet techniques,
and all the other neat stuff Bob Van Valzah might teach us if we'd just
let him in.

Now let's talk about Barriers.  We need barriers to test the mettle
of prospective hams so that we don't allow the Tennesee Toilet Flusher
to Git Awn the Channul and take over.  Agreed.  But why CW as a barrier?
What does it buy us other than a brick wall?  It buys us
dedicated hams who can pound brass.  Does it buy us hams who know how to design advanced digital filters?  No.  Does it buy us
hams who can define and implement really and truly efficient
modes of information transfer?  No.  It gives us dedicated brass pounders.
It gives us nothing to advance the art past where we're already at.
If we're to have a barrier, give us a barrier that improves the art.
I think an EE/digital barrier would be much more appropriate.  I
probably couldn't pass it right now.  But I would
durn well crack a book and study it until I could, figuring that in
the process I was learning something that would be of genuine use,
not something that had gotten the last ounce of efficiency squeezed
out of it thirty years ago.

More could be said, but I've said enough.  A proposal, then:  Make
the CW test 5WPM for all license classes to satisfy the treaties, leave
the CW bands as they are, and let N2XS and the novices do their thing.
Make the tests much tougher to keep the yahoos out.  Give hams a
choice.  All in favor say aye.  All opposed, click your keys.  Somebody
else tally it up.  I gotta go back to work.

73,  Jeff Duntemann   KB2JN  (Packets forever!)