Monday, July 25, 2005

No Code!?

I just read this from a bulletin put out on 7/20 by the ARRL. The FCC has proposed to do away with Morse code requirements for US ham licensees. The article is at:

http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2005/07/20/100/

Quote from article:

"The Commission recommended the change to its Part 97 Amateur Service rules in a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) in WT Docket 05-235. Any rule changes proposed in the NPRM would not become final until the FCC gathers additional public comments, formally adopts any changes to its rules and concludes the proceeding by issuing a Report and Order (R&O) spelling out the changes and specifying an effective date. That's not likely to happen for several months."

I'd say that it is likely that this rule change will go forward, despite Old Ham objections, of which no doubt there will be many, and vociferous. I'm glad I passed my morse code before this happens --- if the rule change had occurred already, then I wouldn't have found the motivation for learning the code, which I am grateful for having learned. Maybe I'll even use it someday!