But is CW on the Ham bands a fading signal these days? I wonder. It's
certainly faded on the commercial bands and has been 'fading' since the
1930's when Western Union switched to RTTY, but it's still out there aboard
a significant number of ships where labor costs are low.
There was much hoopla over the fact that the US Coast Guard quit monitoring
500 kHz for maritime distress calls a few years ago (1999 if I recall
correctly) but that was rather meaningless, since the USA no longer has a
merchant marine to monitor!! We've turned over the business of shipping
goods around the world, including to the USA, to foreign powers. We have
relatively few merchant ships left afloat, and those are in use mostly
because of the 'Jones Act' which requires that any ship going from one US
port to another be a US flagged ship. But that's very few ships: mostly
those running to and from Hawaii and Alaska ports on the west coast and some
running from the Gulf of Mexico to eastern ports. And most of them, since
they follow the coast, use cell phones for communications! So that
particular announcement of the "demise" of CW was simply one more
recognition that the US is no longer a significant maritime country.
(I gotta include a little story here. When I was aboard A SeaLand ship on a
shakedown cruise off the California coast in the early 1990's, my job was to
check out the radio and radar equipment. I couldn't not raise the Coast
Guard on the 2182 SSB distress frequency. The rig appeared to be working
correctly but no answer on a frequency guarded 24X7. The captain was
standing there watching. He picked up his cell phone and dialed the Coast
Guard. It seemed there was a celebration of some sort going on that had
distracted the operator monitoring 2182 at the Coast Guard shore station.
They apologized and immediately came back on 2182 and said I was loud and
clear. The captain hung up and commented, "If I ever need them, this is how
I'll get them!" holding up his cell phone).
As I said a while back, I think of Morse like the use of horses. Sure, as
the automobile took over 100 years ago, the use of horses declined sharply,
but their use certainly did not die out. Indeed, in many ways equestrian
skills have grown and the treatment of horses in general is probably better.
Any technology that is interesting to people is sure to continue, even
thrive. It doesn't necessarily need a major commercial application or
financial justification. All it needs to be is fun.
That was the story that the Times and other papers missed completely. It's
why most of us bought our Elecraft rigs.
Ron AC7AC
-----Original Message-----
From: Leigh L. Klotz, Jr. [mailto:
[hidden email]]
Sent: Thursday, December 28, 2006 9:42 AM
To: Larry Phipps
Cc: Ron D'Eau Claire;
[hidden email]
Subject: Re: [Elecraft] NY Times story on end of morse requirement
(withneatphotos famous hams)
In the print edition, there was a headline above that: ".- ..-. .-
-.. .. -. --. ... .. --. -. .- .-.."
My daughter (8) had no trouble reading it.
Larry Phipps wrote:
>
> As you may know, the writers generally have no control over the
> headlines, so blame some assistant editor somewhere you shall remain
> nameless.
>
> Larry N8LP
>
>
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