I would add to Rob's view with the addition of teaching antennas. How to build, calculate and couple it with the "reality" that there is INDEED a bit of "Black Art" to them.
Bob - N0DGN On 4/8/2010 1:58 PM, Rob Atkinson wrote: > I agree. I also have decided it was a mistake to eliminate the CW > requirement for the license, not because it is necessary for > communication (it is not) but because it is necessary to communicate > with the most basic simple homebrew rig, a CW transmitter. > > Now, even if we teach homebrewing in the form of electronics lessons > and construction skills, the builder of the most basic rig, a crystal > controlled cw transmitter, will not have learned cw already from > getting his license. He will have his completed project and not be > able to do anything other than key a dead cw carrier and un-key it. > Of course he can learn the code at that point, but wouldn't it be more > fun and easier if he already had that skill ready to go? Many have > said, and I also in the past, that no one wants to learn CW now with > all the high-tech gadgets in our lives these days. They miss the > point--it is not all about CW only, but CW in combination with > learning about radio, building a basic rig as a learning experience > and then using CW to communicate with it before moving on to more > advanced circuits and transmitters. > > Dropping CW from the license test has been one more step in turning > ham radio into glorified CB. > > I think we need to focus on learning electronics as an attraction to > ham radio and bring back a Novice type HF privilege CW license because > we lost the introduction to ham radio that involved building and > getting on HF right away. Now we have new people starting out with 2 > meter FM handy talkiies and it is not the same. > > I used to be in favor of dropping CW from the test until I realized > all that I wrote above. > > > 73 > > Rob > K5UJ ______________________________________________________________ Our Main Website: http://www.amfone.net AMRadio mailing list Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/amradio@mailman.qth.net/ List Rules (must read!): http://w5ami.net/amradiofaq.html List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Post: AMRadio@mailman.qth.net To unsubscribe, send an email to amradio-requ...@mailman.qth.net with the word unsubscribe in the message body. This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
