Glad this subject came up! Still more or less being considered young in this hobby at age 33 going on 23 I hold the highest regaurd for preserving the foundation of Amatuer Radio. Such as for CW for instance I think it's the most important mode just for our sole purpose which we can make great use of besides in emergency communications.
Like many of us real CW operators if there were an emergency and we knew at the other end of the Red Cross line there were another Ham op. I would hope that if CW were my last hope at getting a message across i'd have a chance right? WRONG! I can't wait for them to load up HRD or some other type of program when I may have a few seconds or minute to get the code across. "I'm a CW operator" my response "oh yeah! What type of keyer do you use?" theirs "Keyer! I use a keyboard" What!!!!!! Folks! Just because you use a keyboard for CW does not make you CW operators unless you can receive and send CW with some sort of keyer. Any fool can send with a keyboard, but when put to test can you step up? My belief and point about the code and no code exams were always about the points I mentioned above. Plus! The fact that it was the most effcient mode and comes in handy every time. Those students people always made it about nostalgia or personal. So now that you have a keyboard and interface CW all of a sudden is the mode used mostly for many? Gee! I wonder why. 73! -----Original Message----- From: DAVE WHITE <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: July 01, 2008 5:17 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; dx-chat@njdxa.org Subject: Re: [DX-CHAT] Are CW ops getting older? Ain't nobody getting any younger, Dave! At least if they are, he should patent his secret and sell it. On a serious point, I felt that it was always the older members of the hobby who wished to preserve cw as an entry criterion for the HF bands - something which I always considered to be ridiculous (no, I'm NOT trying to re-open the code/no-code debate). Interestingly, I always said that there was no way I'd ever mess about operating cw, and only did the test to get my ticket. The mode held no interest for me at all. But then one day I bought an all-mode TNC at a hamfest - actually to send/receive RTTY - so I hooked it up to my computer and started to use it. Incidentally it also worked for cw, so it rather "got me into" using the mode on the bands just out of interest. Strangely, I look at my log book these days and I'd say that cw is the mode that I use the most. As you imply, it's probably an age thing. I still send from the keyboard, though use Human Brain Mark #1 for decoding. More grey hairs - of which I now have many - means more cw operating, perhaps? I shall practice sitting on my porch, barking at passers-by and waving my stick at passing traffic in between sending with a bug key. Will I then be a fully-fledged, 100 percent cw op? ...... cheers Dave G0OIL David Rollitt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: HI, I recently made a few QSO's during the All Asia CW test, the exchange in the AA Test is RS(T) and Age for OM's. Having checked my contacts I found the average age was 49.1!! I wonder if anyone else checked their contacts this way. It will be interesting to do the same thing with the SSB test coming up ( I think) in September. 73 David G3XYP ----------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe or subscribe to this list. Please send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the message body put either unsubscribe dx-chat or subscribe dx-chat This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org ----------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe or subscribe to this list. Please send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the message body put either unsubscribe dx-chat or subscribe dx-chat This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org -----------------------------------------------------------= ----------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe or subscribe to this list. Please send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] In the message body put either unsubscribe dx-chat or subscribe dx-chat This is the DX-CHAT reflector sponsored by the NJDXA http://njdxa.org -----------------------------------------------------------
