Text 172, 116 rader
Skriven 2006-05-07 00:44:00 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
    Kommentar till text 170 av Thom LaCosta (1:261/1352.0)
Ärende: Still alive ??
======================
Hello Thom.

05 May 06 08:28, you wrote to me:

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

In all fairness I should add that "here" is just the small part of Europe they
call The Netherlands. Burying lines is easy here. All soft soil as deep as one
can dig. No stones, no rocks, just sand mud or clay. In other parts of Europe
things are different.

No overhead lines means no poles, so there is nothing to tie wires to. OTOH, no
overhead lines means a clear space with no fear of an antenna touching a power
line.

 TL>> When that was a requirement here, many folks did that....passed
 TL>> the cw 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
 MvdV>> up so quickly ;-)

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

There is a movement here too to come to a low entry license. It was shot down
by the government end of last year....

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

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

True. But then again that goes for a lot of old technology that is replaced.
Imagine what would happen if we all of a sudden had to fall back on horse. How
many people really know how to deal with horses these days? And I dont just
mean ride a horse, but everything needed to run a society based on horses as
the main transport. Or carrier pidgeons to stay a bit closer to home. Could you
get a messsage across using carrier pidgeons? Would you know how to make a fire
without matches or a lighter?

That is the fait of old technology, if it is no longer used, the skill to use
it fades out too...

 TL>> I was very active here on 2 meters, and was one of 20 that pooled
 TL>> out 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.

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

Nobody ever taught you how to whistle the tones? ;-)

 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.

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

My guess is that it would not fly here. Many of the people at the monitoring
stations are hams themselves and n matter how creative one is in disguising a
commercial conversation another ham will see through it. Plus that there is a
strong tradition that ham radio should stay wawy from commercial use, so self
regulation would probably cut in.

 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
 MvdV>> a cell phone these days....

 TL> Right you are.

And lets face it: Cell phones are cheaper....

 TL>> That's very important....here, to do that one needs to be an
 TL>> elected 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
 MvdV>> to prove my worth and be elected by the members of the society
 MvdV>> I represent. (VRZA)

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

So why dont you cancel your membership?


Michiel

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