IMNSHO, this is both a good and a bad thing. The FCC is right that having to know Morse is a hurdle to participation in Ham Radio that keeps some (possibly many) from getting involved in this interesting hobby. However, when one looks at the traditional secondary role of Ham Operators keeping the world in touch with places that have lost their primary means of communication, this is a Bad Idea.
Morse is still useful because it can get a message through heavy static, low signal power, and jamming interference far better than voice. (So yes, I don’t agree with the smug punks at Technocrat.net, who call the Morse Code requirement “The World’s most Silly Technology Law”. Let them see how far a voice-only Ham in a typhoon-struck area can get a call for help out screaming into a microphone.)
In an historic move, the FCC has acted to drop the Morse code requirement for all Amateur Radio license classes. The Commission today adopted a Report and Order (R&O) in WT Docket 05-235. In a break from typical practice, the FCC only issued a public notice at or about the close of business and not the actual Report and Order, so some details — including the effective date of the R&O — remain uncertain. The public notice is located HERE.
Also today, the FCC also adopted an Order on Reconsideration, in WT Docket 04-140 — the “omnibus” proceeding — agreeing to modify the Amateur Radio rules in response to an ARRL request to accommodate automatically controlled narrowband digital stations on 80 meters in the wake of rule changes that became effective today at 12:01 AM Eastern Time. The Commission said it will carve out the 3585 to 3600 kHz frequency segment for such operations. Prior to the long-awaited action on the Morse code issue, Amateur Radio applicants for General and higher class licenses had to pass a 5 WPM Morse code test to operate on HF. The Commission said today’s R&O eliminates that requirement for General and Amateur Extra applicants.
Besides, a little specialized knowledge lends an air of camaraderie to a group that has served us all well since radio was invented. (I used MARS comms myself when first stationed in Germany when it was too expensive for me to make international calls. They were voice calls, but the network was built on a Morse backbone.)
The Loss of analog and morse the BASICS of telecommunication, is horendous.
When 90% of digital is to Monitor What is watched, and WHO is watching it…
when the simplist signals are analog, whats to come is MORE monitoring, that we may not wish.
It takes 10 times more power to send digital then Analog, just the increas in picture Size, is astronomical.
Why can’t you hook up a laptop to a USB powered Morse Tone generator?
If you have power for your transmitter, you have power for the laptop. I would also say that even if you’re injured but have the dexterity to use a telegraph key, you will also be able to type.
Amazing to imagine how hard this was for the gray-hairs at FCC and ARRL to dump such a skill, but they had no choice. Still, I doubt this will increase the number of new hams by much, since it’s so hard to demonstrate the need for hams to today’s youth, given the “instant” messaging/cell-phone world they’ve grown up in. And to be honest, I hope a real-life demonstration of that need in the US never happens.
But yeah, I used to repair HW-8/9s at the factory, and stories of guys conversing around the world on 5 watts (or less) are pretty cool.
3,
As it has been pointed out, you can send Morse at signal levels that are almost zero. What do you do with your laptop on day three after the hurricane/tsunami/typhoon/blackout and your batteries are almost empty? Also, what does that tone generator do for you if the person that picks up your signal can’t understand Morse?
Don’t underestimate the importance of simple last-ditch bullet-proof comms.
Hot Dog! I’ve been waiting for Morse code to be taken off the requirements. I have trouble enough typing without having to struggle with the key.
A while back, Dave Letterman had a challenge between two young guys sending a page of text via instant messaging against two old guys sending the same page via Morse Code…
It was not even close… Morse Code was done before the second sentence in IM…
Well, this is unfortunate, but not unforseen. I’ve had my license for about 30 years and always felt that learning how to get through the static should be a basic knowledge (I enjoy QRP, so working the world with less than five watts going into the final transmitter says a lot). If one can’t learn this efficient means of communication at a five words per minute rate then I think that someone is missing a bit of the point of the whole thing.
I hadn’t kept up with the requirements and so earlier this year I was dumbfounded when I learned that the Extra class code requirement was only 5wpm, and had been so since 2000 or so. Come on.. 5wpm for the highest ham class is laughable. I was stuck at Advanced because the 21wpm thing was impossible for me to master. Being an EE, the theory was no problem.
Keeping 5 wpm code is almost the same as no-code. I hope they don’t do this.
As for amateur radio dying, it definitely is. Go to any of the remaining hamfests and all you see are old guys (like I’m quickly becoming). The internet, IM, and cell phones are killing ham radio. The startup costs of ham radio are too high when the phone companies, cell providers and ISPs will subsidized your equipment and connection to the network. And what’s the big deal about talking to some guy 3 or 4 thousand miles away when I get my TV from a satellite 22,500 miles up in space?
The opportunity to teach kids about amateur radio is when some major disaster strikes a remote part of the world, and a sharp operator can tune in distress calls or possibly the only outgoing comms from that location. Now, even the middle school science teachers and under 40 years old and don’t know about this stuff.
9, I’m not a ham personally, but worked with a bunch of them at Heathkit. They had stories about everything, and I’m assuming the QRP/5W/world stuff was real. And we all know that hams never exaggerate. 😉
3, there’s a whole series of RF comm technologies involved, SSB, CW, and so on. You could run a small QRP rig (morse code) from a car battery for, say a hundred hours of transmit time if you were careful with your power. Adding voice (ssb) takes a whole lot more power, and during an event where this would be necessary the most valuable commodities will be water, food, and power. Your laptop battery resource would be mostly wasted if it was used to power the computer.
Gees I should go take my theory tests and get back into it.. I’m a tech plus lol Is that even a rank anymore?
I’ve talked around the world on less than five watts… voice
I’ve also talked across the neighbors television vcr and phones with around 500..
I got into ham radios after getting a C.B. come to find out many ham radio operators hate C.B.ers
Fun hobby, but it can be expensive and take up a lot of room.
I don’t know about ham radio, but I love what AOL did to the quality of the internet after they eliminated “a little specialized knowledge”.
I’m not surprised by this decision. There are other modes, such as PSK that can cut through noise far better than human-detected morse code. I’ve completed international messages using PSK when I couldn’t hear the transmitted signal at all – only the software descriminators could derive the signal through the background noise. More here.
If you have power to run your rig, you can run the laptop too.
You are correct, but that is a hardware-intensive solution. Morse and the methods to transmit it are elegant in their simplicity. Can you use a spark generator cobbled from loose components and a car battery to send PSK?
N1KCG – talking about this all reminds me that Ham radio still exists. That is a good thing. That said, even if a hurricane goes through, we will have car batteries, generators, fuel, etc. Without Morse, but with a laptop, and a simple circuit we can do anything that Morse can do independantly. If I need too go back to morse, I will have a laminated sheet of the code, and just do it without practice, in an emergency situation.
I suspect you’ll still be free to use it if you want. 😉
16, 17,
(stepping on soapbox)
Being a Ham Radio Operator is more than just being a radio hobbyist, you can buy a CB and yak into the ether. A Ham Radio Operator carries the mantle of responsibility as the last bastion of free communications in the world, of reaching out and contacting people in remote places using techniques that reach back to the dawn of radio. Ham Operators are an intellectual and technical repository, keeping alive traditions and techniques in the way guilds have since people congregated to share and preserve knowledge.
Sure, we can still use Morse at our own volition, but that’s not the point.
How many PSK rigs are there in developing places, or after disasters, or in places where the state regulates ownership? This is about more than who gets to make radio calls, it is about preserving a legacy of specialized communications that span the globe in defiance of man or nature.
What the FCC should have done is set up an “open” class free to operate the gear without knowing the arcana.
(steps down)
I think some of the motivation for this measure is because the rest of the world eliminated the morse code requirement. I suppose reciprocity was an issue the FCC had to deal with.
The HAM in me says…
Woo Hoo! I’m a technician that never got around to learning CW. I’ll take that general test now.
Grumpy Ol Scout Leader says….
They took semaphores away from Scouting decades ago. I haven’t seen the 2006 data yet but Jamboree on the Air (JOTA) participation has usually bested Jamboree on the Internet (JOTI). Will it continue?
Since this is the first amateur radio discussion in a long time….
If I could ask John and the other moderators.
What’s your opinion of the Broadband over power line (BPL)? ARRL is dead against it because of the radio communicaiton interference it can cause.
Ironically my radio transceiver has stopped sending CW just as the FCC dropped the requirement. And my keyer paddle broke. I’ve been a ham for some 43 years having learned Morse code at the age of 13. I miss it a little but not enough to ague the new rules.
If you want to get the message through heavy interference, with minimal power, CW beats all modes of transmission. Lately the code segment of the amateur bands has become void wasteland except during contests. And the population of newly licensed operators has been dwindling. Maybe this will spur up some new interest of younger hams who think that the dits and dahs of code are obsolete.
yeah, learning morse was the one thing that stopped my interest in hamming – perhaps i’ll pick it up again now that the FCC has dropped this idiotic requirement
The recent reduction of code speed to 5 words per minute (wpm) was reasonable, but total elimination is a serious mistake. Unfortunately the FCC, in their action to reduce the code requirement to 5 wpm, did it in a manner that disregarded all the hams who worked hard to build their code speed up to the former required 13 and 20 wpm rates. They appear to be repeating their error.
Five WPM is not difficult for most people to master who aren’t smitten by the need for instant gratification and a large reward with little or no effort! There are good courses available that produce quick results with moderate effort.
CW (Morse code) is the one simple binary mode of communications. It can be tapped out with almost anything from a rock to a flashlight. No laptop or interface device is required. I’d hate to be a stroke victim with use of just one appendage and find no one in the room even identified I was trying to communicate in Morse code.
Just a few years back a crew had to quickly abandon their freighter in the middle of the Pacific without time to send a distress signal. They floated for days in their life boat before they managed to catch the attention of an Australian commercial airliner. The pilot was able to radio for help and then left the crew a message: “Help is two days away.” He sent the message by blinking his landing light. The crew was able to respond by mirror. How the crew’s spirit must have been raised by that message!
To paraphrase Samuel B. Morse: “What hath the FCC wrought?”
The whole argument that Morse Code is the simple form of communication makes a HUGE assumption: both parties understand Morse code *and* the language being transmitted. If your average Joe is stuck somewhere with only a rock or flashlight, no laptop or interface device and only one appendage, what do you think the odds are that said person is also going to know Morse code? Even going back 30 years, the odds are slim.
My father is a Ham with an Extra license (that included the high WPM test). He’s been a Ham since he was 13. When I asked him how much time he spent talking via Morse Code (that wasn’t a contest) vs voice in the past 50 years, he said “less than rearranging my sock drawer.” Then, like all true nerdy Hams, he said, “But I had fun doing it.”
I understand that knowing Morse Code might be useful in some circumstances such as if you are a sailor, but those days are rapidly dwindling.
I just joined a class here in Canada (which drop Morse back in 2000 I think) to finally get my ham ticket. There where two things that were stopping me from getting it. One was the price of equipment the other was the Morse requirement. I still plan on upgrading my license to the 5 wpm and eventually the 12 wpm but I’m just glad to get on the air.
When I learned to drive in the 60’s it was a standard transmission. Automatics were common but anyone worth their salt learned to drive a stick. The majority of drivers today couldn’t drive a stick if their life depended on it and only brake with the left foot. No state requires that a driver applicant applicant learn that skill.
Morse may be a good skill to have and there may be situations where it is necessary but a ham operator in anytown USA will never need it. Was morse necessary in New Orleans during Katrina? Even when cell calls couldn’t get through, text messages from those same phones did.
So, you old farts who had to learn morse need to get over it and let the hobby expand in new directions.