Tsk, tsk, Morality Accusations are NOT certified by CREDENTIALISM.

That includes the pseudo-credentialism of the ARRL as "our" "national representative" (very false) in USA amateur radio.

If you have lived any sort of life OUTSIDE of academic isolation or the isolation of one-person/one-station/one-band amateur radio activity, then you would have been exposed to a massive and mixed variety of MORALITY.

For decades the FCC had kept the SINGULAR pass-fail code test for an amateur radio license in every class but the "no-code-test" Technician class (created legally in 1991). Yet, through all that time enforced by ITU-R Special Radio Regulation S25 up to July 2003, the FCC gave the OPTION of using any allocated mode/modulation.  OPTION.

Yet, under the prompting of certain minority groups the elitist code punders KEPT their exclusive sub-sub-band allocations just for themselves. They still have those, yet they bitch and holler fire-and-brimstone rantings upon those who will not do as THEY say. It is as close to demagogury as one can get.

Finally, in December of 2006 the FCC released Memorandum Report and Order 06-178 which established the elimination of all USA amateur radio code TESTING beginning 23 February 2007. The OPTION of using any allocated mode/modulation was left up to the individual licensee. Nothing really changed in USA amateur radio operation. WE still had plenty of OPTIONS to use.  The LEGAL technicality of having ONE pass-fail test on a mode that was OPTIONAL to use was resolved...3 1/2 or so years after S25 was rewritten at WRC-03.

It has been 7 years since WRC-03 and S25 revision and yet the self-righteous code bigots keep on emphasizing and proselyting and preaching about "we MUST be proficient in radiotelegraphy (or we are not 'real hams')" AS IF they were the sole judge and jury over who should do what in amateur radio. To depart from the pseudo-intellectual obfuscatory blabber that has infected this topic, I just say BS to them. I would say more but there are injunctions of "use nice languge" or be deleted if some pansies in here are "offended."

That is your personal OPTION. Just because code TESTING was dropped does NOT mean you just use radiotelephone voice mode.  No one is FORCING you by "moral-ethical badness charges" to use anything but what you personally want to use in the FCC's options.

However, try to FORCE a change in the USA amateur radio regulations to REINTRODUCE code testing and you've got a fight going that won't stop.  R&O 06-178 was a LEGAL issue on USA amateur radio regulations, not some pompous self-righteous demands by some mentally old men who couldn't divorce themselves from the past and re-enter the reality of today.

Oh, my, aren't YOU the self-righteous martyr as well as superior educated being!

You just go ahead and obfuscate the topic and make all the pseudo-intellectual jabber about things which are NOT ABOUT the topic.  That way you can both get a "rep" as (supposed) superior moral beings who are way above the mundane issues of things like amateur radio. Keep up this pseudo-intellectual chit-chat and e-ham will simply delete the whole topic due to space wasting.

73, Len K6LHA

That's "gorilla war" and they ain't no bigger than chimps...OOK OOK OOK   

(try Isla Flacka and actor-comedian Reni Santoni's routine on talk shows of long ago)

Keith, realistically speaking, I really don't think that thought has hit home yet with the electrolyte-proselytes.  Really.  They so much want to live in the PAST that they appear almost deranged when they try to boost-boast about code. Or, when they turn off their computers, have a nice cry by themselves...

Not to worry, Keith, the good old ARRL will look over them and boost the old ways like they've always done.  Big Brother will come to their aid.

Keith, I live only a half hour's drive from Hollywood and all those actors. Ain't no actors who don't "bask in their own self-importance."

I haven't been to a Hollywood Hills party in six years and it won't hurt me a bit to never go to one again.  Think some hams are bad?  Ham actors are worse. 

Couldn't happen to nicer folks...

73, Len K6LHA

NO EXCUSE! None whatsoever.

The LAW for USA radio amateurs requires YOU to know at least enough to determine if your transmitter is working properly or improperly. See the "Technical" regulations in Part 97, Title 47 C.F.R. That is YOUR responsibility, not for someone else. I can do that with simple test equipment and know what to ask someone on the air what to listen for.

USA amateur radio is supposed to be a technical hobby, not just for those whose only interest is on-off-keying radiotelegraphy and playing AS IF you were important. If nothing else, some books can put you straight on technical principles of radio communication.  I suggest going to www.amazon.com and buying the 2010 ARRL Handbook. The total price for that, even with shipping charges will be LESS than ordering it from Newington (which also expects you to pay shipping charges extra).  Its roughly 3/4 the price from that little suburb of Hartford, CT, almost 2/3 if you have free shipping from Amazon..

Do you know how to check out your transmitter before your first cue-so? Or do you think you can get away with just on-off-keying radiotelegraphy like all those teen-age novices way back when?

If your ears are faulty, then you have to use those wonderful BLINKING LIGHTS lights that all the mighty morphing code rangers say is a "direct substitute" for hearing for license testing. There are NO medical waivers for ignorance of technical details of radio transmission, never were.
You MUST know technical details before anything else.

I could care less as long as you know how to use your HF transmitter technically correct, regardless of legally OPTIONAL mode you use.

Where should we send your COURAGE medal?  Yourself, your psychiatrist, or attorney retained to answer the improper-operation your FCC NAL describes?

Like it or not, USA amateur radio is a TECHNICAL hobby and you MUST follow the technical regulations stated in Part 97, Title 47 Code of Federal Regulations. That is LAW.

I can care less if you head-copy 100 WPM or have the greatest zippy-de-do-dah "fist" in all creation. Screw up on your technical regulations and you are back there with the stupidest LIDS.

Long before I got any AMATEUR radio license I LEARNED lots and lots of circuit theory and system operation and USED it to legally and successfully operate RF trasmitters from VLF on up to microwaves, nearly all of it ON MY OWN WITHOUT FORMAL CLASSES FOR MOST OF IT.

Frankly, I'm rather aggravated that some code elitists calls me a so-called moral failure just because I don't love, honor, cherish, and obey morsemanship according to the Church of St. Hiram.

Feel free to walk in my shoes and do MY life experience if you or anyone else are so damn morally superior BECAUSE of code skill. Once upon a long time ago, during a period of war time, I voluntarily enlisted in the US Army. Before the Army let me operate any military radios I had to learn to kill the enemy. Once that was demonstrated the Army shipped me to a place of RF wonder, a huge HF transmitting station outside of Tokyo...WITHOUT any formal classes on how to use the equipment. All of us newbies of then LEARNED by on-the-job "training" and none of my group ever flunked out. Those of us who expended some effort studied what few TMs we had and LEARNED MORE about 'radio' of the 1950s. We didn't get medals for such things, we just DID IT and
didn't make excuses about it being "so hard." We followed the familiar phrase of the Signal Corps, "Get the message through."  We did, relaying about 250,000 messages a month during the height of the Korean War. At the same time, off the 8-hour duty shifts, we had to keep up our soldier training "to close with and destroy the enemy." We used VHF and UHF for radio relay and VHF radios for regular Army infantry training. Finally, budgets eased and we got 1.8 GHz microwave equipeent for my original MOS. Our "formal training" on that mother was two weeks to encompass everything of a 24-voice-channel full-duplex radio relay terminal. I was a supervisor of 9 terminals for my last active-duty year. At NO time in my three-year active duty time did that station ever use any on-off-keyed
radiotelegraphy in any radio circuits. I was never indoctrinated into some love-affair with morsemanship hammered into me by some old men in a New England suburb trying to keep their publishing business going for their own fat paychecks. I carried my "can do" spirit into the rest of my life, a successful life that let me retire to a time when I could enjoy playing with electronics with what I've learned for nearly six decades before...and keep on learning because there is NO PAUSE in its technical advancement. Technology never stops growing. Its too bad that amateur radio hasn't caught up in technology since before WWII.

I'm not only aggravated but downright pissed-off that there exist some proselyte-electrolyte evangelicals who insist and insist that on-off-keying radiotelegraphy "must be used" in a hobby activity just because they've personally gotten so "good" with it and are "naturally superior."
Then their arrogance insists that those who don't embrace their One True Radio God are somehow "morally deficient" becaise we don't care to use it. WTF do they think THEY are?

Well, I know who a lot of them "think" they are but Geo. Fremin III won't let me say it. 

36.5, Len K6LHA

Let's set a record straight here. I have never "studied" Latin and the phrase I tossed in (at the last) was just a random thought still stuck in my head about honoring Astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee at the Cape. Those three died as a result of an accidental fire during a "routine" ground check of Apollo vehicle systems.

As once a very tiny part of the USA manned space effort I still feel a part of that and am looking UP and FORWARD to more and greater things in technology as well as honoring those who gave their lives as part of it.

A very long time ago to many of you, I keyed on my first HF transmitter (1 KW RF output, single-channel FSK teleprinter) in early 1953. There were NO on-off-keyed CW radio circuits used on any of the 35 other HF transmitters there at the time nor of the HF transmitters added later. Never in my career as an electronics design engineer have I been required to know or test for on-off-keyed radiotelegraphy for any radio operator license. That's a period of over 57 1/2 years.
Sorry, but that is against Scripture of the Church of St. Hiram. R&O 06-178 changed all of that over 3 1/2 years ago. Finally, the State triumphed over a False Religion!

In the last 5 years the sum total of new Radiotelegraph Operator (Commercial) licenses granted by the FCC was 99. That's less than 20 per year, all classes, on an average. Forget your "bus fare" and don't expect good coffee in trying to get a commercial radiotelegraphy job. On the agenda for WRC-12 is one that will replace on-off-keyed radiotelegraphy in Maritime radio service with automatic teleprinter signals at a higher rate.

Cute. Trying the "moral-ethical flaw" gambit again. FALSE LOGIC is the presumption that on-off-keyed CW radiotelegraphy has some significance for the future just because some individuals have tested for that skill long ago. It is FALSE LOGIC that on-off-keyed radiotelegraphy has ANY real value in commercial radio communications. The ONLY VALUE in amateur radio is to satisfy the "pathetic emotions" (not to mention day-dreams of "greatness") of long-time amateurs in radio who think that radiotelegraphy is THE thing that is amateurism.

Then continue. Nobody is stopping you. Not the FCC, certainly not the ARRL. No group or organization has banned on-off-keyed radiotelegraphy USE in USA amateur radio bands. Just don't feel like you are some "pioneer" in radio for diddling your paddles. You aren't one of those.

Absolutely NOT. Your "pathetic emotion" seems to be some angst about NOT being "worshipped" or at least "revered" for being good at the very first communications mode in radio. BFD and some LOL.

When are you going to bring back Spark transmitters and "coherer" receivers? Those were the first things to enable all that on-off-keying radiotelegraphy in early radio. Think you can win a DXCC with just a crystal set receiver? 

If you really, Really want to convince amateurs to use radiotelegraphy, don't do this pdeudo-shrink gambit of "pathetic emotion" and "morality ploy" AS IF you are so superior in all things radio. You aren't.

I'll take "Kate Beckett" over Samuel Beckett any day...and that is NO "pathetic emotion." Run that over your Castle's drawbridge some time. Don't go overboard into the moat on using "Familiar Quotations" to make some vague point. R&O 06-178 settled that but it never forbade on-off-keying radiotelegraphy use by AMATEURS.

If you are "so good" at radiotelegraphy, then you can TEACH it to others and encourage them in it. One thing for sure is that you cannot force it into USA radio amateur regulatory LAW.

73, Len K6LHA

Of course. A number of years ago I dubbed the League as the "Church of St. Hiram." 

That's not just satiric commentary. Each issue of QST contains some boost for radiotelegraphy in amateurism, over and above all other OPTIONAL modes. It is as if it were an Editor's Guide manual that dictated it. Since the ARRL has the virtual monopoly on amateur radio publications in the USA, it is a guarantee of mental conditioning to those easily swayed by such propaganda. One such brainwashed individual, indoctrinated as an early teener, practically lives his free hours on these venues, immersed in his proselyte circuit.

Absolutely. We will all be damned to some strange hell if we do not follow their dictates of what is right and proper according to their religion of radio. If WE do not follow their scripture then "WE" have some moral flaw, thus are to be freely damned by them in impunity while they are cloaked in righteousness.

Sometimes these forums become such "public toilets" full of proselyte propaganda.   

Good on that, Keith.

Some "word policeman" will show up trying to correct your "days of lore" statement. Unfortunately, you are very correct, Keith, most of what gets printed in QST is LORE, not "yore." 

Good on that! I will join you when I have the time...when not responding to Latin lovers correcting my typo of repeating "ad" instead of using "per." 

More important, though, is to check the output of the FCC's documents, looking for the long-awaited Petition for Reconsideration of R&O 06-178 and the proselytes trying to fight for their one true religion of morse mandated for ALL amateurs by LAW. So far there hasn't been much. Apparently the Believers in the One True Morse Religion are fighting a gorilla war...while dressed as chimps.  OOK.  OOK. OOK.

73, Len K6LHA

Yes, Ad Astra Per Aspera

That is at the Apollo 1 Memorial at the Kennedy Space Center. It's been a while since I was a tiny part of the Apollo program and its 400,000 or so total personnel at NASA and all the contractors and sub-contractors.

I've never claimed to be a "Latin expert" nor a skilled craftsman of other dead (or dying) languages such as International Morse Code.


Other than that, do you have anything cogent to say about amateur radio?

73, Len K6LHA

That is a NON-answer or so poorly written that it is confusing.

If one reads this "answer" as-is then any knowledgeable person could pass just about any test. 

As to having "real engineers" doing testing, I will dispute that.  The majority of FCC duties and actions in 1964 or 1956 were LEGAL matters since the FCC's task in 1956 or 1964 were to regulate USA civil radio, the same as it is now.

For "real engineers" the FCC has those, concentrated in the Office of Engineering and Technology.  It is on their website, available from the home page. Note also that it is common for the FCC to invite public commentary on certain technical areas which are NOT taught in universities or colleges today.  "Real" (degreed) engineers would be taught anything not in a syllabus.

Okay, How much did it cost for any radio operator license in 1964?

I don't remember what a test fee was in 1956 when I took and passed all the elements to get my First 'Phone.  The "expensive" part for me was a train ride into Chicago (90 miles, no personal auto yet), a hot dog from a street vendor after the test (plus another and a cup of coffee...was a cool day in early March), and - I think - a 50-cent ticket to see a matinee of the movie "Oklahoma" to wait for the train to depart back home. 

At my amateur test iin 2007 the test fee was $14.  Astronomical cost to a kid of 7 but a pittance to an adult. 

In this "Let's Pretend" total scenario, try to remember that USA amateur radio is NOT A PROFESSION, NOT A GUILD, NOT A CRAFT, NOT A UNION. It is ESSENTIALLY a HOBBY.

Holy cue-soes, Batman! Let's all have a standing ovation for Boy Wonder! 

WRONG! The old FCC ham tests did [NOT] test your "qualifications" for anything except answering the test questions. Did you have questions on "designing" your own rig? I doubt it. Did you have questions on metalwork to build the chassis that would hold the tubes and other things? I doubt it. Did you have questions on "modding" your finished work?  I doubt it.  Did you have questions on actual testing to insure you weren't emitting on wrong frequencies?  I doubt it. You must have had SOME questions on frequency limits of Novice band frequencies...but there are quantum leaps of knowledge from that test to lawful regulations regarding band frequency limits and their testing. Did you have a Hewlett-Packard 524 frequency meter at your disposal to accurately measure HF frequencies?

WRONG Before 1955 the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) had standardized civil aircraft communications in the 118 to 136 MHz VHF band, the civil radio-navigation band at 108 to 118 MHz. Military aircraft communications were on 225 to 400 MHz. In 1955 the ICAO adopted the "NATO" phonetic alphabet (also released service-wide for the USA DoD) for civil aviation worldwide. It takes a box-car full of imagination to think of a ham novice rig as interfering with those AVIATION
bands from a bitty novice transmitter, no matter how badly tuned or self-oscillating it was. You might have been correct if the year was 1937, but not 30 years later.

"Dangerous voltages?" Yes, that's possible but there weren't all the incessant warning signs everywhere in 1967 about [horrors!] "dangerous voltages". If you got "bit," you got bit, and that was that. Most of the time everyone who worked in electronics in 1967 had gotten bit at one time or another and survived. The North American residential electric power distribution voltage was 115 VAC nominal in 1967. UK and Yurp at 230 VAC nominal, twice as high and they mostly managed to survive an accidental electrical shock.

You were PLAYING with a low-power HF radio transmitter. "Unsupervised" of course. 

WRONG Strike the word "qualified" and substitute "allowed to." There is/was absolutely NOTHING in the Technician class, General class, or Amateur Extra class license test of 2007 that "qualified" me to do any of those things. I happen to know what "qualified" means and I've been "qualified" by experienced personnel and later training to operate transmitters from VLF to microwaves with CW RF power outputs greater than 50 KW decades before I took any amateur radio license test. I've been "qualified" by corporations paying me real money for my design, building, testing services long before...including being grilled by a Design Review panel and, later, being one of the Design Review panel grillers, being part of pre-manufacturing meetings of electronics and given final authority on drawing title block sign-offs up to Final Report writing.

Irrelevant. USA radio amateurs haven't done anything much in the way of inventions and innovations in HF radio electronics the last four decades or so. 

...and how many refuse to show a schematic of their early 1970s tube-type rig which has been shown the same for a decade?  ...and where is that "invisible" Elecraft K2 or the Heathkit 2m transceiver you once reported having?

Your statement IS saying lots of things, none of them complimentary to those who haven't had the time to devote to rebuilding ancient circuitry cribbed out of massive collections of QSTs. A modern ready-built HF transceiver is economical to those who don't have TIME away from their family, work, and other things in life to devote to "design" and building "all by yourself."

So what have you done lately? Assemble a K2? Assemble an ancient Heathkit VHF HT?

What does your message say regarding CODE or NO-Code?

It is all part of the one-station/one-operator/one-shack syndrome psychologically. Similar to doing computer-modem communications. So few can extend their senses beyond their immediate surroundings to realize that anyone (they can't see/touch/feel/sense) are listening to them. Instead they reach inwards to their own psyche and presume to be "the world." They try to make all others believe as they do so that they can extend their personal belief that they are in control. Of everything. Its a grande-scale pretending to be something they are not.

One slight disagreement but only slight. These losers may understand the situation realistically but they (or their egos) over-ride that with emotion of wanting desperately to be in charge and RULE over others. Put simply, it is their way or the highway.

Most, if not all of the dissenters of elimination of the code test have NOT made any valid case to the FCC in any Petition for Reconsideration of FCC 06-178. Maybe some have written to the FCC and attempted to chastise them but we in the public have not seen much of that. The FCC HAS made some strange input to them public on both NPRMs 98-143 and 05-235 which are still in the ECFS. There is NO "conspiracy" by the FCC to keep such things "secret." Such few "strange" communications are simply digitally copied and put into a docket's database; anyone can view them and see their "strangeness" (almost illegible notations on another document or writing while at least half drunk as two notable ones).

Since FCC 99-412 ("restructuring") and 06-178 (code test elimination) spanning a whole decade, the FCC has not FORBIDDEN the use of on-off-keying CW radiotelegraphy except in the five very narrow channels on the "new" 60m "band." On every other allocated USA amateur radio band, on-off-keying CW radiotelegraphy enjoys carte blanche allocation for USE. That even includes the 200 KHz total bandspace on 6m and 2m set aside solely for code using moonbounce DX. I really don't fathom  WHY all thses rabid code advocates are jabbering incessantly over all that code testing nonsense. NOW.

The only conclusion I can come to is that these jabbering code advocates are just being control freaks bound and determined to make all USA radio amateurs who come later suffer somehow...as they had to "suffer." Boo hoo. Poor babies.

Technologically, those jabbering code advocates who got their beloved Extra "diplomas" (license grant certificates) in the 1970s or earlier are simply lying when they say the TEST was so "HARD" back then. The last four decades of even amateur radio technology has advanced by several plateus and some of that is included in the NCVEC tests of today and five years ago. Some seem to have difficulty with the slightest simple algebra of power, voltage, and amperage calculations(!) in another Forum. It is fairly clear those are just the front-panel knob twiddlers, the "operators" who would be lost in the area behind those front panels. They would be Lost if they had to - as license regulations demand - prove the technical operation of their radios. 

Another slight disagreement, Keith. There are enough of those old gas-passers to crowd out those of us who can think for ourselves, aren't devoted to the continual perpetuation of ancient radio skills, and are living for a FUTURE, not the past. Licensing regulations should look FORWARD and not to what has been. The FCC has very good records on "what has been," even greater than Moderator Jimmie has in his basement.   

I look at such behavior as their personal "survivor" syndrome. The want to keep the past because they've been there and it is familiar to them. The FUTURE can be a scary place for many, especially technical areas. These lovers of the past are no longer young and they can observe life passing them by. Personal survival demands they obliterate such scary things, the "unknown" and concentrate only on the past. Naturally those folks were always the "best" at what they did and aren't hesitant to tell everyone that. 

Ad astra ad aspera.

73, Len K6LHA

Joe, if you don't agree wholeheartedly with Jim then you walk the borderline between "uncivil behavior" and "personal insults."   

The FCC makes all allocated modes OPTIONAL to use.  I think that is a mighty fine thing.  Some others insist on the draconian dictates of "one must take a code test!' (just like they had to long ago).

The FCC settled the whole thing with memorandum report and order 06-178 released in December 2006 and effective on 23 Feb 2007.  So far, nobody had made a valid case for any Petition for Reconsideration on 06-178 but the amateur "discussion" venues have the old-timers trying to ressurect the American Civil War period aftermath.  Those are LOSERS and makes for way too much noise, smoke, and mirrors and petty, petty differences of opinion.

The FCC never forbade USE of on-off-keying radiotelegraphy yet all the old-timers (who had to take a code test long, long ago) keep on selfishly insisting that all who come after them MUST do so.  They claim some sort of ENTITLEMENT forever...which they do not have.

HF bandplans haven't changed much in over a decade but some of the spoiled brats just can't stop mouthing off in various venues about CODE.  The "south" (southeastern) USA did rise again but it rose with the times and (pretty much) stayed loyal to the Union.  It's just so bad that some of these old-timers can't stay loyal to amateur radio of NOW but want their entitlement of long ago to be theirs forever.

The LOSERS keep manufacturing "problems" which don't exist in order to attempt hiding of their selfishness...

73, Len K6LHA

The FCC doesn't make decisions based on what ONE old licensee feels is "fun" but rather what it means to the FCC as to whether or not an applicant is worthy to being granted a particular license.  See all the reasons given in Memorandum Report and Order 06-178 released in December 2006.

On the other hand, lots of old, greying Extras NEED to boast of their code skill to please their own egos.  Kind of like a government subsidy for their emotional well-being (or maybe its a "health plan" in disguise?).  Not to worry, the League (which is also old and greying) will protect you and help boast and boost morse code skill.

73, Len K6LHA

No sweat, your Ham Radio Job is assured and the Unions won't kick you out. 

On the other hand radio technology has been constantly increasing in the quarter century of privatized testing.  The technology has increased even more in the 46 years since your 1964 test.  Were you or the FCC prescient and could read the future?

73, Len K6LHA

Notice also that there's been NO SCHEMATIC given.  Those photos, at least 5 years old, are in Kees Talen's HBR section.  If this was a knock-off of one of the many HBRs - and it was a supposed transceiver - then it would be prudent to also publish a schematic of it.

K6LHA

What answer did you get?  Hint: 1964 was 46 years ago.

Hint: All code testing for any USA amateur radio license was eliminated 3 1/2 years ago.

"Easy as pie"? 

I took and passed all 120 questions on 25 February 2007 to achieve Amateur Extra. Almost on the 51st anniversary of achieving my First Class Radiotelephone (Commercial) linense in one sitting in early 1956.  Having earned my living as an electronics circuits and system design engineer since 1960, I did not find the tests "difficult" but the NCVEC QPC did write a number of distractors in answer choices which required close scrutiny of possible choices.

I'm sure...now you were a SOMEBODY and you could flaunt it on every ID. 

Hint: 1976 was 34 years ago. Lots of changes everywhere on everything since then.

WHO is right?  [it helps to attribute who you are responding to in all Forums]

Thankyouverymuch your magnificence.  Let me throttle back on such ACCUSATORY language and just say that there are tens of thousands of "kunckleheads" who already had Amateur Extra class licenses before there was any privatization of radio operator licensing begun by the FCC.


WHY?

Is amateur radio a guild, or craft, or union?  Is it really and truly a "vital part of national defense?" Or isn't it just a NON-PROFESSIONAL hobby?  By its regulatory title, it is definitely NOT a profession.

Hint: Privatizing of BOTH Commercial and Amateur radio operator licensing began a quarter-century ago.  It is illogical to expect that the FCC would change that just for the Amateur Extra class license.  Neither would they reinstate the code test, especially when the worldwide use of
"morse code" has been diminishing continually over the last half century.  In the last 5 years the FCC has granted only 99 Radiotelegraph Operator licenses, almost (but not quite) 20 per year on the average.

You could make your own case to the FCC in the form of a Petition to reinstate the code test. It would have to be a very good case presented in light of Memorandum Report and Order 06-178. 

Just because YOU had to "write out answers" long ago for YOUR amateur radio license is definitely not a good legal reason, nor a logical reason, just a personal comment of an oldster who likes to look down on "inferior" hobbyists who didn't test as YOU tested.

Do you wish me to draw diagrams and write answers for my AMATEUR test?  No sweat, I can do that since I've been doing that for a living in PROFESSIONAL electronics for a half century.  All you've explained so far is that "we" had to do things like "you" did and haven't explained WHY.

73, Len K6LHA
Amateur Extra with Vanity call, tested for the first time in amateur radio at age 74
Life Member IEEE
Former Associate Editor at Ham Radio Magazine
Volunteer US Army veteran 1952-1960 (ASN RA16408336)
Electronics hobbyist since 1947

Are we done with NON-TOPIC chit-chat now?  Is it possible to get back to the TOPIC, which, if long memory still works, is Why Have An Extra Class?

A decade ago and before, there were two separate pass-fail tests that had to be passed in order to get an Amateur Extra class license upgrade from General class:
1.  A code cognition test at 20 WPM equivalent rate in International Morse Code.
2.  A written test of 50 multiple-choice questions, one of four answers for each.

Passing both of them meant a licensee could enjoy ALL American amateur radio privileges.

In May, 2000, FCC 99-412 went into effect and the maximum code test rate was capped a 5 WPM.  In February, 2007, FCC 06-178 went into effect and eliminated ALL code testing for any amateur
radio license class.  Note that May 2000 is over ten years ago and February 2007 is over 3 1/2 years ago.

There have been no changes in privileges allocated to USA amateur radio Amateur Extra class operating licensees in the last decade, compared to other license classes.

The logical question is then WHY have an Extra class at all?  That was the question posed by KD8HMO in the first posting in this Forum Topic.  The majority of respondents, nearly all being Extras themselves, "replied" without touching the legal part of regulations, lapsing into their own fond memories of their youth and the usual litany of "all amateurs should know morse code because it is so darn wonderful, gets through when nothing else will" but mainly because THEY are already in that license class.  It should be fairly obvious (except to them) that most of those Extras don't want to lose their rank, status, privilege and the entitlement they somehow feel they richly deserve (under old, old regulations).

The end result in this Forum Topic was an over-abundance of a combination of misdirection, obfuscation, and folksy chit-chat (more suited to a blog than any discussion of amateur radio license classes).  It reached a nadir with N2EY's rationalization that "the Extra should be kept because it
is so POPULAR!"  FWITW, as of this morning's stats (25 Oct 10) the total number of Technician class license grants represented 49.2% of ALL USA amateur radio licnese grants and the total number of Amateur Extras was only 17.2%.  Technician class outnumbers Extra by 2.85:1 and outnumbers General by 2.22:1.  "Popularity?"  I don't think so...just some clever weasel-wording to rationalize having an Extra class license (since four decades ago).

Those who bitched about the elimination of the code test for a USA amateur radio license are way out of town.  You all had your chance FIVE YEARS AGO when NPRM 05-235 was open for Comment.  If you couldn't make your case for keeping the code test 5 years ago, you are just wasting time trying to bring it back NOW.

73, Len K6LHA (always a USA Amateur Extra class licensee)