<<<It will make a difference for those who do operate CW, because there are
no CW exclusive sub-bands. >>>
Unless I missed something there are vast expanses of non-phone freqencies
for hams on HF.
but cw can be operated anywhere, even in the phone subbands! you are
complaining?
Further, there are completely unoccupied backwaters where it is possible to
operate cw almost in secret. the slice between 3725 and 3750 is one of
them.
Someone responded to my cw post with a message that is no longer in the
archive so I am unable to quote it. working from memory, the author
basically said that cw use will die off if there is no testing for it.
Firstly, is this how we want to sustain cw, artifically, by forcing people
to learn it in order to get a ham ticket? This reminds me of all the
fanatical environmentalists trying to shut down the logging industry, so
some little wildflower plant won't become extinct. Folks, the natural
progression of life is that new things eventually replace old ones. I don't
like it all the time but i accept it. There are times when i wish we never
had TV or the internet. I hate to see new housing developments. But
changes are what drive life, industry, sustains economies, and even hobbies,
and adaptations must take place. This is why the postal service does not
have horse riding on their employment exams, even if a few carriers
somewhere may ride horses--the Pony Express is history.
Secondly, if we think about ham radio in 100 or 200 years, does anyone
seriously think there will be cw testing for licenses (i know there may not
even be radio at that point, but work with me on this)? Maybe there will be
cw operating, (I personally doubt it) but testing? Please, save the wild
CW FOREVER knee jerk stuff and actually do some thinking about this.
So, if you want to keep the test now, when will you let it go? 10 years
from now? 50?
I'd like for those of you who want to retain the testing to think about why
you can't let it
go.
BTW, I'm not necessarily married to a complete abandonment of cw testing at
this point--retaining it for the extra exam for example might be a good
idea.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Okay, so it has been revealed that Ten Tec alledgedly avoids selling to
certain "problem" customers and it seems that this is to supposedly skew
opinion to the positive.
One problem with this is that anyone who wants a ten tec product and runs
into a refusal to sell, could easily get around that by either getting the
product from someone used, or arranging with another ham to make the
purchase as a shill.
There's no law that says Ten Tec has to sell to anyone. That's a canard.
There are lots of businesses that sell only to certain classes of
customers. Plumbing suppliers that only sell to pros for one. The reason
is that amateurs, people doing their own plumbing, are a pain in the drain
to deal with. They don't know anything. they ask too many questions.
They use a product incorrectly, then go back and whine and demand a refund
because they lack the knowledge to know what to purchase for a particular
job. I bet if I called up Harris and said I wanted to buy a DX10, and I had
the money, they'd find out I'm not a broadcaster or an employee of one, and
refuse to sell. There are even businesses where it is unethical to sell
to someone just because he has the money to pay. Rare violin dealers with
2 million dollar italian violins would not dream of selling one to some
yahoo with the money following a lottery win. You have to be a top
concert pro or established collector to get in the same room with one of
those fiddles. Recently I read in the Wall St. Journal that Best Buy had
begun cracking down on people who abuse the return policy they have. They
began keeping a database of customers who went beyond a certain number of
returns threshold and started declining to keep them as customers. All
perfectly legal. In fact, I have a Kantronics KPC-2 TNC i'm about to
sell, and I was just thinking last week that I will quiz prospects to find
out how much experience they have with packet radio. The reason being I
don't want to sell it to someone who doesn't know what he's doing because he
probably will have trouble setting it up, bug me about it, and wind up
returning it for a refund. I'd rather wait until i have a buyer who knows
how to use it. Now, if I was convinced, that a certain customer wanted the
KPC-2 for no other reason but to advance an agenda in which I get smeared on
qth.com or something, you can bet I'd avoid selling it to him with no
apologies. I do not know if that applies here or not, but there are
usually two sides to these things, and I bet Ten Tec has one.
rob/k5uj
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