Text 170, 101 rader
Skriven 2006-05-05 08:28:14 av Thom LaCosta (1:261/1352.0)
    Kommentar till text 166 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: Still alive ??
======================
Michiel van der Vlist wrote in a message to Thom LaCosta:

 MvdV> Hello Thom.

 MvdV> 30 Apr 06 16:01, you wrote to me:

 MvdV>> painting the house last year. I plan to put it up again when I
 MvdV>> finish the painting job this summer....

 TL> The telephone company removed my antenna from the pole(can not legally
 TL> hang wires on their property)...and I never climbed back up....but
 TL> weather is nice now and I'll do it.

 MvdV> We don't have telephone poles here. all wiring is underground.
 MvdV> Has been as long as I remember. Plenty of trees here though...;-)

Now that the local utility has been awarded a 72 percent increase in their
rates. and property taxes will raise 300 per cent, I'm sure we will catch up
with you, in terms of certain things.....of course, I will no longer be able to
pay my bills, so I can hope for an early death to escape progress.


 TL> When that was a requirement here, many folks did that....passed the cw
 TL> element simply to get on HF phone.

 MvdV> It is no longer a requirement?

 MvdV> It was dropped here three years ago. I missed the US following up
 MvdV> so quickly ;-) 

I think it has been dropped....and the technical questions have been
dumbed-down....so I expect to see a new crop of fence post operators.


 TL> But, it shouldn't make a difference....since CW is frowned upon by
 TL> virtually everyone other than hams and the spy agencies, it's not
 TL> something anyone would use...unless they are bit nutty like I am and
 TL> enjoy it (g).

 MvdV> That's right. The last one to officially drop it was the maritime
 MvdV> buseness. The official justification for the CW requirement has
 MvdV> always been that we shluld be able to identify others on shared
 MvdV> bands so as to avoid causing them interference. when nobody but
 MvdV> us officially ises it any more, that justification went out of
 MvdV> the window and so the powers that be did not really have much
 MvdV> choice. After some rear end skirmishes it was dropped.

The sad part is that when the modern technology fails, as it will, there will
be no one able to communicate by CW....except for a few of us old pharts.



 TL> I was very active here on 2 meters, and was one of 20 that pooled out
 TL> money together to install a phone patch....

 MvdV> We would have liked to offer that service too, but it was
 MvdV> illegal. Both forbidden by the phone company and the ham
 MvdV> regulations.

As I recall, 20 of us contributed 20 bucks each to set up the autopatch....and
back then there were no units with built-in touch pads....so many of us
"liberated" touch tone dials from phones....put that and amplifier and a
speaker in a small box.  I can remember having to pull over to the side of the
road to make a phone call....simply because I didn;t have enough hands to hold
the portable, the touchtone box and steer the car.

 MvdV> Today the phone companies do not care what you hook up to their
 MvdV> lines and the regulations have been relaxed so it could be done
 MvdV> now. But we still could not use it for third party traffic.

I expect that if cell phones weren't so popular here, there would be a lot more
activity via phone patch....and hams would be very creative in disgusing their
commercial conversations.  I remember here one employee of a police department
used the autopatch quite a bit to conduct used equipment business with an FCC
employee....


 MvdV> Another complication is that local calls are not free here. So
 MvdV> who is going to pay the phone bill? Ah, well, it is water under
 MvdV> the bridge. No one is interested in that any more. Everyone has a
 MvdV> cell phone these days....

Right you are.

 TL> That's very important....here, to do that one needs to be an elected
 TL> official in the ARRL....so it's far too political for me.

 MvdV> Oh, here they don't just send anyone to do that either. I had to
 MvdV> prove my worth and be elected by the members of the society I
 MvdV> represent. (VRZA) 

I have been told that one of the measuring sticks used to estimate the worth of
an ARRL appointee is how well they do with DX.  I'm a life member of the ARRL,
but I am quite conveniucd that they do NOT represent the best interests of
Amateur Radio. 

73,
thom - k3hrn
http://www.zerobeat.net/ 
--- GEcho 1.20/Pro
 * Origin: Home of The Other Robot (1:261/1352)