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[CQ-Contest] CW is not obsolete

Subject: [CQ-Contest] CW is not obsolete
From: rlboyd@CapAccess.org (Rich L. Boyd)
Date: Tue Mar 18 12:19:46 1997
Now that I've launched the pro-contesting diatribe at you, let me try 
another in favor of CW, an important aspect of CONTESTing...

CW is not obsolete

1.  When a band is open, the CW part of our spectrum has lots of activity.

2.  During major operating events our CW spectrum on an open band is jam 
packed.  Given the narrower CW signal as compared to SSB or other modes, 
this means a lot more activity in a comparable slice of spectrm.

3.  Is CW "low tech?"  Maybe, in the positive sense that it's simple.  
But maybe it's high tech:  The only digital mode readily copyable from 
the radio with the human ear and brain, no modem/TNC or computer needed.  
It's efficient in its spectrum use and that's anothe high tech aspect.

There's been talk in recent years of narrow band FM and other narrow band 
modes.  If you're going for a narrow band signal, why not start with a 
narrow band signal...CW?  Maybe a CW signal 1/10th the width of a typical 
current CW signal is possible in the future.

4.  Contrary to the gloom and doom talk of the demise of CW in the Coast 
Guard, MARS, or Merchant Marine, I'm told in certain services CW is still 
very important.  If you're laying in a pile of leaves in the dark trying 
to avoid detection by "hostile forces" (let's say terrorists), would you 
rather communicate by using a microphone, a keyboard, or a micro CW key 
responsive to slight pressure of your fingertip?  Which mode would best 
"get through" from a tiny radio at the microwatt level?  Now that we have 
the TS-50 and equivalent smaller HF radios, maybe the HF HT or even 
"wrist radio" is coming along.  It seems to me CW will provide the most 
effective communication from a simple, limited power, micro radio.

5.  At another end of things, which is a new ham in a developing country 
more able to afford (build and maintain), a simple CW rig, perhaps built 
from old TV set parts like they used to be in the U.S., or a high tech 
SSB rig?  There are over two billion people in China and India alone.

6.  As if the above was not enough, the teaching of CW can be justified 
as an honorable part of the history of ham radio and a part of the ham 
radio ethic.  By way of analogy, if you tried to put together a course of 
study on fishing, you could just teach the students to drop sticks of 
dynamite into the water and scoop up the fish that float to the surface.  
Or...you might teach fly fishing, spin fishing, netting, various "modes" 
of fishing.  A fisherman who was knowledgeable in all these could be 
considered "the compleat angler."

Ham radio "as we know it" may currently be suffering from a drift away 
from the ethic of earlier generations of hams.  It may take a vigorous 
teaching of this ethic, the magic and mystique of shortwave, including 
CW, to preserve ham radio.  I believe teaching our new hams how to behave 
like gentlemen -- and CW can be an important part of that -- on the air 
may be the most important, and most neglected, part of our ham radio 
training.

The 160 meter band has been known over the years by the nickname "the 
gentleman's band."  In recent years I've heard some disgusting things on 
160.  It has seemed to me that 160 has gotten some of the overflow of the 
worst elements from "75," which has become over the years the closest 
thing on the ham bands to the worst aspects of CB.  As a proposition, I 
would say that at one time -all- the bands were gentleman's bands; 160 
may just be the last casualty.

I think CW can (and should) be part of ham radio's "return to its roots."

73 - Rich Boyd, KE3Q


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