No more Morse Code requirement in ham radio

[G R 'Scott' Cundiff]

In the U.S. one big hurdle for people getting their Ham (Amateur) Radio license has been the morse code requirement. In getting my license, I passed three morse tests at 5, then 13, and then 20 words per minute.

When amateur radio started, it was ALL morse code, then AM voice, followed by SSB voice, and then, at higher frequencies FM voice.

Then there have been all kinds of digital modes. I exchanged messages via computer/ham radio over the air long before the Internet came along.

Meanwhile, morse code became less and less necessary. Even Navy ship-to-shore operators quit learning morse code a number of years ago.

Now, the change has finally come to Amateur Radio. The other written tests remain - focusing on rules, practice, and technical issues, but no more morse code tests. http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2005/07/20/100/?nc=1

This is a change I have known was coming for many years, but it still saddens me a bit that the "secret handshake" of ham radio operators (the ability to talk in dots and dashes) is now going to end.

[Jerry Frank]

Sort of like the passing away of the slide rule some 30 or so years ago. The young engineers I show it to today have no idea what it is for.


Jerry

[G R 'Scott' Cundiff]

One thing this does is ruin the plot of a lot of futuristic shows like Star Trek. In every series, sooner or later, the good guys hear a signal of dits and das and someone recognizes it as Morse code -- they not only recognize it, but they can copy it.

Now that Morse is pretty much put to bed, it is less and less likely that anyone a hundred years from now is likely to hear an SOS and recognize it even if it comes from a Galaxy far away!

[Joel Merrill]

Sort of like the passing away of the slide rule some 30 or so years ago. The young engineers I show it to today have no idea what it is for.


Jerry
I have a nice slide rule in a leather case, a small pocket one and a college text book on how to use it. They were given to me by someone who was going to throw them away. I thought it would be fun to be able to use it just to show off. That college text book did me no good. I can't figure it out.

Joel :fav03

[G R 'Scott' Cundiff]

Sort of like the passing away of the slide rule some 30 or so years ago. The young engineers I show it to today have no idea what it is for.
Jerry

I heard an engineer talk about the slip-slip sound of slide rules in a classroom during a test. I guess that sound is now replaced by the click click of laptop keys.

[Marsha Lynn]

no more morse code tests.

This is a change I have known was coming for many years, but it still saddens me a bit that the "secret handshake" of ham radio operators (the ability to talk in dots and dashes) is now going to end.

I have a lot of memories associated with Morse code. I'd have to review before I could use it now but it was once a part of my life. My father was an amateur radio operator and a teacher. He organized "ham clubs" for jr/sr high school kids and even for adults. We made a lot of trips to the "federal building" in Chicago where we country yokels tried to hold elevator races during down times (while other people were slaving over their tests). I still have a "General Class" license that I haven't used in years (proof that I could once send and copy Morse code at 13 wpm). Ray Moore (whose death was recently announced here on NazNet) set me up to use ham radio to communicate with my parents when I was an Olivet student. It saved on phone calls.

Ah... memories. No more code, eh? It's going the way of black-and-white television and the plaid sports shirts that the boys in my father's ham club wore. It's not that we miss those things so much as that there were some nice aspects to the world we lived in then that have departed with them. I guess its nice that time takes the rough edges off our memories, but it makes it tempting to look back with rose-tinted glasses and think things were actually better way back when.

Oh well. On to the brave new world. (I should read that book so I know the implications of that phrase.)

Anyway, thanks for the info, Scott. At this point, I'm not tied in enough with the amateur radio world to catch the news.

Marsha
WB9DHQ

[Dave McClung]

In the U.S. one big hurdle for people getting their Ham (Amateur) Radio license has been the morse code requirement. In getting my license, I passed three morse tests at 5, then 13, and then 20 words per minute.

When amateur radio started, it was ALL morse code, then AM voice, followed by SSB voice, and then, at higher frequencies FM voice.

Then there have been all kinds of digital modes. I exchanged messages via computer/ham radio over the air long before the Internet came along.

Meanwhile, morse code became less and less necessary. Even Navy ship-to-shore operators quit learning morse code a number of years ago.

Now, the change has finally come to Amateur Radio. The other written tests remain - focusing on rules, practice, and technical issues, but no more morse code tests. http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2005/07/20/100/?nc=1

This is a change I have known was coming for many years, but it still saddens me a bit that the "secret handshake" of ham radio operators (the ability to talk in dots and dashes) is now going to end.

I had to pass a morse code test to get my radio license as part of my pilot training. In those days all of the navigation aids were identified by morse code. When you dialed into a navigation station, all you heard were dits and dats. Then some stations began to use female voices. There was a VOR station located in Alice, Texas. When a pilot dialed in he or she heard a sexy female voice saying "This is Alice VOR." But out of concern for the older pilots the voice message alternated with morse code.

[Anne and Dwayne Hood]

Dwayne would have been trained to be a pilot, but he was overweight when he joined the USAF, so they put him in Communications. It was another code that he had to learn. He made equivalent to two years of college on the test he took in the USAF. He went to college after being in service four years. They had frozen promotions, except for single guys, at the time he and I were newly weds.

[Marg Webb]

[QUOTE=Marsha Lynn;
Ah... memories. No more code, eh? It's going the way of black-and-white television and the plaid sports shirts that the boys in my father's ham club wore. It's not that we miss those things so much as that there were some nice aspects to the world we lived in then that have departed with them. I guess its nice that time takes the rough edges off our memories, but it makes it tempting to look back with rose-tinted glasses and think things were actually better way back when.



.

Marsha
WB9DHQ[/QUOTE]

Marsha, this is just the beginning of remembering when.
As the years go by and we share with younger adults, they just cannot believe how "it use to be".
Sometimes one feels really sad to see some things change and are forgotten.
Although this is a wonderful time to be alive I feel.

[Gina Stevenson]

I have a lot of memories associated with Morse code. I'd have to review before I could use it now but it was once a part of my life.

Marsha
WB9DHQ


No ham or Morse code here ... but I did have one of those slide rules, and had learned to use it. Probably would just look at it now and go, "Huh?" ;)