Len you misunderstand what I am saying.
And I am saying two things: You can't write well and you can't do proper arithmetic. See the following sentence of yours now that you want to keep on this personal-attack schtick instead of going Radio Schtick:
What I'm saying is that 50 years of commercial radio + 3 years of amateur radio does not equal 53 years of amateur radio.
Say whatever you want but GET IT RIGHT. My first key-on of an HF transmitter was in early 1953 and my last RF transmission as a commercial license holder was in mid 2009. Thats a difference of 56 years, not "50." Further, military radio is done whenever there is a need; i.e., 24 hours a day 7 days a week if needs be.
Commercial radio, any kind, can consume 8 to 12 hours a day on the job. Amateur radio is done whenver free time is available and MUCH less than a full-time job...unless a ham is fully retired and has nothing else to do in retirement except mount and run their brag tapes on the Internet.
You are trying to twist words around that (somehow) I am
equating commercial radio experience "with" amateur radio experience but that isn't what I've said.
All radios work by the same laws of physics. After a few decades
IN various radio services they all have obvious similarities and the differences are due primarily to regulations (official) and self-imposed "regulations" (which really aren't official).
You missed out on experiencing firsthand half a century of amateur radio evolution. This includes, but is not limited to, the amateur evolution - including the birth and death - of many amateur radio companies, operating modes, FCC licensing, incentive licensing, contesting, radio clubs, and a few sunspot cycles. Commercial radio is not amateur radio and amateur radio is not commercial radio.
I've "missed" NOTHING in "amateur radio evolution" since that "evolution" in the past 70 years has been FOLLOWING commercial/industrial/military radio all that time, using it when it had been perfected by others. The ONLY "difference" between amateur radio and every other radio service is a bunch of regulations. THE LAWS OF PHYSICS FOR BOTH ARE THE SAME.
I EXPERIENCED FIRSTHAND the EVOLUTION of MANY things in electronics that have unfolded during my working lifetime. I've designed them into things, analyzed them, tested them, put them to work in ways that weren't originally conceived to be. I feel blessed to exist in that development time. It isn't over yet.
I count myself as PART of the USA electronics industry since 1956. Hello? That is 54 years. I've been aware and informed of lots and lots of electronics companies since 1947...designers, manufacturers, distributors, publishing houses, retailers, wholesalers, infrastructure electronics conglomerates (such as AT&T), the HISTORY of ALL electronics in the world. The PLL or Phase Locked Loop was born the same year I was...1932.
"Operating modes"? THINK. Amateur radio is forbidden to be a professional communications carrier (that's why it is called "amateur"). It cannot use transponder techniques for radiolocation (such as radar, DME, TACAN, GPSS for example). It cannot use multiple carrier communications because that falls under the "common carrier' definition which is illegal in amateur radio. Amateur radio cannot use multiple-phase-amplitude digital modes unless it is in "common use"...even if such are IN common use the rest of the "amateur community" doesn't like it because it wasn't the mode of 50 years ago.
The "amateur community" pretty well stuck itself into the PAST once WWII was over and single-channel SSB started replacing AM voice. Four-voice-channel SSB (what I call the "commercial format") was already in-use prior to WWII. I've actually operated on all the modes I mentioned above. I can't do that in USA amateur radio because of all those regulation RESTRICTIONS.
Did you think the transistor was born in Newington? No, it was in New Jersey. Bell Labs. Did you think a "ham" company invented the Integrated Circuit? No, it was in Texas and a teeny place called "TI" or in California at a teenier place called "Intel." Take your pick, there's good arguments for both sides. I began radio hobby activities the same year the first transistor was born.
I don't think that anybody considers you a novice by any means. However, you are also not considered to be a 53 year man either.
Yes, quite a few do...because I didn't do what THEY did, worshipping regularly at the Church of St. Hiram. I haven't been able to BE a Novice class licensee for 10 years and would never consider it.
I can't be considered a "53 year man" either, because I am 77 now and was 74 when I took and passed my very first amateur radio license test. I didn't follow the SCRIPT that all were "supposed" to follow:
1. Get interested in radio as a young teen-ager.
2. Follow the "incentive plan" to the letter, advancing class-by-class over many, many years.
3. Always consider on-off-keying CW to be the height, the epitome of all radio skills.
4. Enter every radio contest ever devised, collect as many certificates as you can.
5. Collect as many QSLs as you have wall space, add walls if you have too many.
6. Be impatient to reach your fifties when you can tell all how super-wonderful you are.
7. Be a Life Member of the ARRL to prove how "loyal" you are to the "fathers of radio."
Your no-code extra will forever create doubt in the minds of some.
TS to them and I couldn't care less. My USA amateur radio license, like my commercial radio license, was granted to me by the only agency that CAN grant those licenses in the USA. There was NO "amateur radio community" that granted me anything but a lot of irritation from them.
Your considerable experience in the commercial side can be a continued asset to amateur radio if you make it so.
Total ARRL bullcrap you blabber like a parrot. Do you think there is REALLY some OT zombies with keys will EVER "honor a no-coder?" Haw!
Feel free to help the amateur radio community with circuits, antennas, and whatever else you can. And let us know how you are evolving as an amateur.
Oh! How magnanamous yuu are, your supreme excellency! Wow! You will "LET" me do all those things? Just so you can have fun TALKING DOWN to us "lesser beings!?" Oh, how THRILLING. Not.
Now some amateurs might be offended by you saying that they are "pretending" [to be commercial operators].
Oh, my, you mean some actually get "offended" by being called what they ARE? Sonny, I was never a commercial morse code operator. I've only met a few before they expired this life. I know how they acted. I know of how their "followers" tried to act. I'm not impressed with "thousand-yard-stares" while they act like human modems, playing like what they think a very old-timer did back in the dawn of radio, before their time.
I don't think that amateurs are pretending; they are setting up two-way radio stations, operating them with considerable skill, and contacting other amateurs the world over under adverse conditions, and doing it for the fun and the challenge.
"...under adverse conditions?" What, their coffee got too cold or their soft drinks too warm? Tsk.
When I BEGAN in radio it was under rather different circumstances. We weren't PLAYING with radio. The Cold War had ramped up by 1953 from its start in 1948 and the USSR had The BOMB. We didn't "experiment," we used what we had learned to use to maintain long-distance radio communications with the USA and the rest of USA forces throughout the world. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week.
We of back then had NO commsats, had very few undersea cables, didn't have any transistorized equipment, but we all had the experience of what had been done in WWII for messaging. Not by old ways of manual morse code but by old 5-level TTY...8 separate circuits per SSB, 4 separate circuits per time-division multiplex, 1 circuit per FSK CW transmitter...to the rate of a quarter-million messages a month just to/from ADA in Tokyo during the height of the Korean War.
Having just about ceased any professional work in electronics communications, all I can say is that the USA military has done much finer things in the 54 years since I was on active duty. The Army alone could manage to RUN the first Gulf War from Hq in Florida. By the Second Gulf War in Iraq and Afghanistan, it did the same plus flying remote reconnaisance and bomb-strike flights from Nevada. Digital voice and data is now routinely sent over the DSN, in-clear or encrypted, by whatever path is open and not bothered by ionospheric conditions. For backups to the DSN the USA has wideband troposcatter battalions, mobile satellite 2-way relay through non-military satellites, other microwave radio relay systems and fiber-optic, lay-as-needed, wideband land communications. Oh, and for last-ditch backup on long distances there's HF SSB (commercial format)...at a level of "use only for alien beings invading from outer space." Oh, and for the grunts who bear the brunt of all the fighting, the USA has robustly encrypted FHSS manpack radios (half the size and bulk of First Gulf War radios) for small-unit communications. Think you can do an intercept of contents of one of those in the field when it hops carriers 10 times a second? Rotsa Ruck, Flash.
Now tell us again, IN YOUR OWN WORDS IF POSSIBLE (not the ARRL PR), how you think it is SO IMPORTANT for all USA radio amateurs to learn clear-text on-off-keying CW morse code...as a "national resource." Or are you going to raise the bull pucky meter by repeating old ARRL Maxims from 6 decades ago?
