CW controversy

[Bill Fuqua]

It is not the Rice Box industry that is driving this now. It is BPL. 
The  Power Industry were made aware in 2000 that technology was available 
to allow them to dominate the communication industry and not just provide 
electrical power to their customers. Amateur Radio has been the only thing 
in their way and by reducing the perceived  value of amateur radio and the 
technical qualifications of its operators they can knock down the barriers. 
If amateur radio becomes indistinguishable from CB radio to the  public it 
can become a secondary service to BPL.  The power companies have a lot more 
to gain than the rice box companies.  They have a lot more political 
influence   and resources too.

Look at the timing. It before the change of power in Congress and Senate at 
the last minute. A week ago there was an article in our local news paper 
written by a FCC commissioner that promoted BPL and other technologies to 
increase productivity in the USA. This was very unusual. It was in the 
Opinion section of the paper. There has been a constructive attempt to 
weaken amateur radio so that the FCC can claim that we no longer possess 
the technical knowledge and skills to provide some of the services we had 
been in the past. This was coming and the VEC committees that cerate the 
exams have been unknowingly helping the administrations cause. Look at what 
has happened.
1. the elimination novice, advanced and tech-plus license
2. the reduction in code speed. This was done primarily to eliminate the 
handicap waver.
3. Tech license exam question pool does not contain many of the "Key Words" 
of radio technology.
Examples are resonance, resonant, mixer, detector, heterodyne or 
superheterodyne, intermediate frequency etc.
4. The first excuse for eliminating code was the fact that there was no way 
to enforce the rules that allowed tech's to operate HF if they had a CSCE 
for code. So they had to give all techs the same privileges. And along with 
that decided to eliminate code for all classes of license.
5. It can be shown now that a second grader can practice taking all the 
license exams like a video game and learn to pass them without knowing 
anything about radio theory or understanding any or it at all.

Now given that they can come up with many more excuses to eliminate our 
privileges one at a time.
As an example. They now can say that amateur radio operators are not 
competent to construct, repair or modify their own equipment. And require 
us to purchase only FCC certified equipment.
Since a license is so easy to get it makes it more difficult to regulate 
the use of HF linear amplifiers that CBers use and create havoc in the 
radio spectrum. That and demonstrating the interference problems that 
Amateur Radio operator cause to BPL ( it works both ways) they can justify 
the reduction of maximum power. Being officially involved with Homeland 
Security and FBI, they may mandate certain modes of operation to make it 
easier for computer moisturizing of the QSOs. Such as demanding that we all 
go to digital modes.

73
Bill wa4lav

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