[TenTec] CW-Only Rig?

[Bwana Bob]

That's been my experience, too. I was first licensed in the mid-60's
and the cw bands were very busy, especially at night. You didn't even
need a calibrated receiver to find the ham bands. 40 is still fairly
active during the day on weekends, but 80 cw is really dead except
for a few traffic nets, even at night. 

I think that it is because the ham community stopped supporting the
Novice class license. The Novice was an easy entry level HF license.
Now everybody pushes the Tech license as the way to get into ham radio.
The techs get on the 2 m repeaters where there is no opportunity to
learn cw or radio technique. After a few months of listening to the
same windbags on the repeaters day in- day out, they lose interest
and drop out. The only ones that stay are those who just want to use
2 m for family utility communications.

It isn't that cw has been replaced by digital modes (I don't hear
wall-to-wall digital signals in the cw bands). There just aren't enough
new hams getting on HF at all. Except for 20 m and 75 m SSB, I don't
hear that much voice activity, either.

		73,


		Bob WB2VUF

"Avila, Edward" wrote:
> 
> Charles, sad but true.........I'm 51 and returned to CW after 35 years of
> phone or no hamming and really disappointed with the CW bands -- last nite
> in fact here on the West Coast at 2100 pst I couldn't "hear" a single CW qso
> either on 40, 30 or 20 meters -- my wire antenna doesn't tune to low end of
> 80.....I'm sure there was cw activity somewhere in the world, but nothing I
> could hear! When I was a kid novice in the 60's I'd get on every nite and
> always had trouble finding an open spot of the CW bands to call
> cq.......other than cw contest weekends, there are nights when all is too
> quiet on 80 and 40 meters cw -- I'm surprised the ssb/digital guys haven't
> been putting more pressure on the arrl/fcc to grab more of the CW segments.
> 
> 73.........k6sdw
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Charles Carter [mailto:aa0ri@kansas.net]
> Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2001 9:40 AM
> To: Mike Siegel; tentec@contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TenTec] CW-Only Rig?
> 
> Mike and group,
> I think they would be playing to a very small audience.  There are more and
> more open spaces on the cw portion of the band and most of the guys I work
> are older than I am (61).  Plus you have to have a TT to really know how
> great they are.
> 
> It's a nice thought though.
> 
> 73, Chuck
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Mike Siegel <ki6pr@elite.net>
> To: <tentec@contesting.com>
> Sent: Saturday, January 06, 2001 11:16 AM
> Subject: [TenTec] CW-Only Rig?
> 
> >
> > Hi folks -
> >
> > It seems to me that most T-T fans are also big CW fans. I was thinking the
> > other day about how nice it would be if Ten-Tec decided to build an HF
> rig,
> > totally dedicated and completely optimized for CW operation - in other
> > words, the ultimate CW rig.
> >
> > It also occurs to me that with the rest of the world de-emphasizing CW,
> this
> > would be just the right time for such a rig, just to help stir up more
> > interest in the mode.
> >
> > Comments? Other thoguhts?
> >
> > 73 to all,
> > Mike KI6PR
> > El Rancho R.F., CA
> >
> >
> >
> > --
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> >
> 
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