[TenTec] NYT story on end of cw testing

[Rob Atkinson, K5UJ]

this story ran in the business section of last Wednesday's New York 
Times.....

rob / k5uj

Morse Code, A Fading Signal

By MIGUEL  HELFT
Published: December 27, 2006

It may be the ultimate S O S — Morse Code is in distress.

With thumb and forefinger barely touching the two metal ends of  a Morse 
paddle, a ham operator unleashes a stream of dits and dahs.

The language of dots and dashes has been the lingua franca of amateur radio, 
  a vibrant community of technology buffs and hobbyists who have provided a  
communications lifeline in emergencies and disasters.

But that community has been shaken by news that the government will no 
longer  require Morse Code proficiency as a condition for an amateur 
license. It was  deemed dispensable in part because other modes of 
communicating over ham radio,  like voice, teletype and even video, have 
grown in popularity.

While the decision had been expected, some ham radio operators fear that  
their exclusive club has been opened to the unwashed masses — and that the 
very  survival of Morse Code is in question.

“It’s part of the dumbing down of America,” said Nancy Kott, editor of World 
  Radio magazine and a field representative for the Centers  for Disease 
Control and Prevention in Metamora, Mich. “We live in a society  today that 
wants something for nothing.”

A woman in a mostly male world, Ms. Kott is one of about 660,000 licensed 
ham  operators in the United States and is the American leader of Fists CW 
Club, an  organization that calls itself the International Morse 
Preservation Society. (An  “open fist” was the hand position typically used 
by telegraph operators when  sending Morse, which is sometimes called 
Continuous Wave, or CW. And in ham  radio slang, someone who sends fine code 
is said to have a good fist.)

Within 48 hours after the Federal Communication Commission’s move this month 
  to drop the Morse requirement, a discussion on www.eham.net ran more than 
380 messages and 57,000 words long, the  equivalent of a short novel. The 
postings were divided roughly evenly between  those lamenting and praising 
the commission’s decision.

“CW is just another mode and should not be afforded any special priority 
over  others,” wrote K4UUG, who like many radio aficionados identified 
himself online  using his radio call sign. “Proficiency should not be 
required for those who do  not wish to use the mode.”

As part of its decision to eliminate the Morse requirement, the commission  
made essentially the same point.

Inside a hilltop trailer above Stanford  University in Palo Alto, Calif., a 
couple of veteran coders seemed to be  taking the commission’s decision in 
stride earlier this week. In a room  cluttered with electronic equipment, 
they translated the dits and dahs that  beeped in the background at dizzying 
speed, the chatter between someone in  Canada, VE6NL to be precise, and 
someone off the coast of Antarctica, VP8CMH.

“It’s a bit like a foreign language,” said W6LD, whose real name is John  
Fore, a securities lawyer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, a prominent  
Silicon Valley firm. “You learn it and it’s fun to use it.”

With thumb and forefinger barely touching the two metal ends of a Morse  
paddle, W6NL, a k a David B. Leeson, unleashed his own stream of dits and 
dahs  with the ease of a virtuoso, joining the global conversation. “I fell 
head over  heels for amateur radio when I was 4 or 5 years old and heard 
Morse Code signals  from afar at the station of a 14-year-old,” said Mr. 
Leeson, 69, a consulting  professor of engineering at Stanford. “I still 
remember the thrill.”

The thrill turned into a hobby, and the hobby turned into a career in  
technology. In 1968, Mr. Leeson founded California Microwave, once a 
thriving  telecommunications equipment company but now defunct. Now radio 
and Morse are  just for fun, said Mr. Lesson, who is faculty adviser to the 
Stanford Amateur  Radio Club, which once counted William R. Hewlett and 
David Packard as members.

Mr. Leeson and Mr. Fore are both active in radio contests, 48-hour  
competitions in which hams try to contact as many other hams as possible, 
often  using Morse. Mr. Leeson has a station in the Galapagos Islands, where 
he goes  several times a year with his wife, Barbara (K6BL), for contests. 
They once  contacted as many as 17,000 other hams in a weekend. Mr. Fore, 
who is 50, and  got his first license when he was 10, has a station in 
Aruba.

They embody the kind of utility-free passion for Morse that the futurist 
Paul  Saffo said would ensure its survival.

“Freed from all pretense of practical relevance in an age of digital  
communications, Morse will now become the object of loving passion by  
radioheads, much as another ‘dead’ language, Latin, is kept alive today by  
Latin-speaking enthusiasts around the world,” Mr. Saffo, a fellow at the  
Institute for the Future, wrote in his blog.

Morse Code was first devised in the 1830s for use with the telegraph. It  
later became an essential part of civilian, maritime and military radio  
communications. But the military has largely abandoned its use in favor of 
newer  technologies, and the Coast Guard stopped listening for Morse S O S 
signals at  sea during the 1990s.

The F.C.C. first lifted the Morse Code requirement for entry-level licenses  
in 1991. It later dropped proficiency requirements for higher-level licenses 
to  five words a minute, from 20. And after international regulations 
stopped  mandating knowledge of it in 2003, it was only a matter of time 
until Morse Code  was no longer required in the United States. The 
requirement will formally be  phased out sometime next year.

The demise of the Morse requirement, however, could be a boon for ham radio  
itself. After the F.C.C.’s decision, the American Radio Relay League, an  
organization representing ham radio operators, said demand for information 
about  radio licenses surged from about 200 in a typical weekend to about 
500.

“We are very pleased to see that,” said David Sumner (K1ZZ), the league’s  
chief executive.

That is no consolation for the most avid defenders of Morse.

“There is something magical about being able to put two wires together and  
start going dit-dit-dit dit-dit,” said Ms. Kott, or WZ8C. “We are just going 
to  have to get on the air and do what we do and hope for the  best.”

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