Gentlemen:
This discussion of what is normal amateur radio is a never ending discourse
that occurs every time we have change, especially if the change looks like
it might be a quantum change.
When I was a child and had just gotten my license the first time, the Net
Control station for the 80 Meter net at my home phoned my father at his
office and asked him to stop me from calling into the Manitoba Phone Net on
3760 with my SSB rig, I was fouling up the Net.....
When we got a bunch of old Model 12 and 14 teletype machines and got them
running on 80 we were told that we would wreck the National Traffic System.
In 1969 I built my first FM repeater up in Sault Ste Marie, Ontario and
there was a loud uproar from the existing AM Crowd, a group of three, about
the awful modulation and the wide signal of the station on their
regenerative receivers.
In 1978 a small team in Ottawa, one of three teams in Canada, built a Packet
Radio system and we incidentally coined the term "Digipeater". There was a
heated and very vociferous discussion that microcomputers were most
certainly not part of Amateur Radio.
I frequently meet other CW operators who vigorously promote that the use of
a Keyboard on CW is not real CW operating. These same people used to be
very upset with those who first used some DTL logic to build a Keyer and use
a Paddle, they were not real CW operators either.
My amateur radio may not fit with the definitions of amateur radio that are
acceptable to some other radio amateurs. Guess, what? That is OK! I just
ask that you exercise your rights as you see them in amateur radio and I
will try hard not to let my rights be a point of distress to you. We have
lots of room, even in 2.1 Khz at LF, to do a lot of things and have a lot of
fun and we definitely can do some things that the existing LF community,
Government or Otherwise, have never done before. I have always been able to
tell when I am out front of the pack, I am constantly reaching around and
ripping the spears and arrows out of my back, but I also know that goes with
the fun of doing something new.
73
Larry
VA3LK
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