Ladies
and Gentlemen:
OVERVIEW
OF REQUESTED ACTION:
Based
upon the following information from my members, I urge strongly that we submit
comments to the FCC in support of maintaining Morse code testing in some form. Again, based upon input from GLD members,
I suggest we continue to support a 5 wpm test level for the Extra Class license
level.
Obviously
some level of activity on the part of our General Counsel would be required to
develop and submit these comments; however, this would be a rather perfunctory
operation that could be managed nearly in total through a paralegal.
BACKGROUND
For
what, if anything, this may be of interest to you all, the following is a
summary of much of the information I received from GLD members in response to
one of my polls – this one related to the FCC NPRM&O including
deleting all CW testing. The
questions I asked were:
Question No. 1: Do you
operate using CW? ___Yes or ___No.
Question No, 2: What do you
believe ARRL should do regarding the FCC's proposed rule change?
___ 2.a. Do nothing. Let
the FCC do what it chooses without encouragement or protest.
___ 2.b. Fight to have FCC retain a Morse code requirement but do not
allow this fight to draw effort from our attempts to obtain additional,
critical changes in the Amateur Radio license structure.
___ 2.C. Fight strongly to have FCC retain a Morse code requirement
even though doing this will prevent us from engaging in a strong campaign to
obtain additional, critical changes in the Amateur Radio license
structure. Pull out all the stops
for CW.
The
results are available in more detailed numbers, but the significant facts to me
are as follow:
CW
POLL
The
results are in from my poll asking what, if anything, ARRL ought to due in
response to FCC's Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) to abolish all Morse
code testing for amateur licenses.
A total of 523 of you participated.
Thanks.
Overall,
you appear to believe ARRL should fight the Commissions' proposal. This preference was expressed by 64% of
the total of 523 responders (and by 43% of 213 non-CW ops and 58% of CW
ops). Of these who said to
fight to retain "a" CW test somewhere in the licensing structure, 20%
thought we should engage in the battle but not drop everything else; whereas,
13% thought we ought to drop everything else to fight. Twenty two percent of CW users recommended
we not fight FCC's plan to drop all code requirements while 56% of non-CW ops
held the same opinion.
Of
the total 523 responders, 36% said we ought not to fight the FCC NPRM, but that
we should let the Commission do what it wants without protesting.
A
couple of additional revelations of the poll were: 1. 3% of non-CW ops thought we should
drop everything else and fight to keep Morse code testing, and 2. 40% of non-CW
users thought we ought to fight a measured battle against the NPRM. In other words, 43% of non-code users
believe FCC should maintain a CW testing requirement of some sort. Only 57% of non-code users feel there
should be no Morse code requirements for amateur licenses.
In
a poll I took two years ago, 5% of responders said we should fight to the
bitter end to save CW testing, 5% of you said to fight to the bitter end to
abolish this testing and 95% of you said to fight a measured battle to keep CW
testing of some form.
Taken
together, 327 of 522 total responders to the most recent poll say we should
fight to keep code at some level in the Amateur Radio license structure. Only 185 responders said to do
nothing to preserve some form of code requirement.
Jim Weaver, K8JE
Director, Great Lakes Division ARRL; http://www.arrl.org/
Tel.: 513-459-0142; E-mail: k8je@arrl.org
ARRL:
The reason Amateur Radio Is!
MEMBERS:
The reason ARRL Is!