It might not be broke, but it doesn't work that way, either!

Dan, KF6A, writes:

"What will happen if we make the extra ticket as easy as a tech? I'll tell you. All existing hams will run down to their local VEC and pay $6.50 and become extra's."

Oh, give me a break.

I don't think anyone here is advocating turning the Extra Class into an 11-meter-style freeforall. Enough kneejerking, awreddy. I think it's more or less a given fact that the higher class licenses will remain...for better or worse...the domain of the higher speed-capable ops. I _would_ agree, however, with the statements of another poster that says there's this perceived 'CW elite'. Self-perceived, I think. Some of these same 'elite' ops, after all, are the same folks you find running some really trashy phone operations on various bands, notably 75 and 20 meters. Given that, perhaps if there _had_ been some big rush to get more ops onto these bands, some of these 'elite' ops might not have been so quick to turn this spectrum-space into a forum for worldwide Andrew Dice Clay impersonations.

But, vide infra, yo:

"Why bother restructuring at all. Let's follow in the footsteps of our Liberal brothers and just make it a big free-for-all, like graduating EVERYONE from high school whether or not you can spell "IT" let alone read what I just typed. Hidden under the guise that it's not fair or I just don't want to or we don't want Johnny to grow up feeling like an underachiever. Cause to quote Slick Willy, "I feel your pain"! Waaaa!"

Hey! Yo! Dan! If I wanted to listen to Limbaugh, I'd turn the Big Fat Idiot on on the radio where he belongs! This is about amateur radio, last time I checked, not about airing out your political laundry.

As for why it's 'broke', you just summed it all up. Right there. That paragraph and the ones following. You _really_ think all of us out here who're trying to go forward in ham radio really want to listen to this 'those young whippersnappers who're ruining this nation' crap? Not by a long shot! As I've said before, it's not going to be CW that takes amateur radio down, it's this attitude that anyone coming along after the Walker Brigade isn't worth their weight in J-38s. That's the problem.

Let's put it this way: remember back...if you _can_...to when _you_ were getting going in amateur radio. Yeah, I know, there was a lot less to occupy your attention back in the Chester A. Arthur administration days. Now, if you had had a whole bunch of hams bent on busting your chops because you had an 'inferior' license, would that have given you the incentive to continue? If hams in the higher classes were sitting around in their rockers next to their rigs ranting about how all those youngsters (and to some of these, I at my 37 years counts as a 'youngster') are ruining the service, would you have really been hankering to join _that_ fraternity? I...think...not. And that, booya, is what's causing this depletion of the ranks as the oldsters go SK on us and no new blood is being shown any compelling sides of amateur radio that'd make them want to jump in.

I guess the problem here is that now that you don't have the FCC to look down its nose at you, with things such as nonrenewable novice tickets and entry-level testing done with all of the distaff hostility musterable, there's a cadre of older hams out there who feel that this is now _their_ duty. My take on that? Get off our tip!! You're doing no one any good by doing this, especially not the amateur service. You're _certainly_ not making _your_ point with this sort of rhetoric. Just makes me...and most anyone else I know...tune out. And when you get a lot of people doing that, lowering the code to zippo WPM won't even help. Handing out 1x2s on streetcorners won't help. People just won't want in, and that's the bottom line.

Stow the rhetoric. Keep it to yourself. And if you feel you must pine for the 'good ol' days' in amateur radio, mind you don't get buried in the dust from all of the remodeling done by those of us who still give a damn.