maybe the MCW guy was for real, He might have been a weak signal and doing CW for that reason, and he coulda been really far away, and hit several of the repeater in/outs in a row. That certainly has been known to happen. And the muffled guy, well he coulda had a bad mike cord? I am just trying to give fellow hams the benefit of the doubt, I know. Mr. Longbow, take note. Mr. Longbow may not be licenced, I don't know, maybe he wants to be annonymous, that's his business...but (as usual) I digress. A lot of the time, we are talking about LICENCED hams here, unfortunately. And a 20WPM didn't seperate the chaff from the wheat! It was "NO" filtre to keep clowns like this out of radio. Forget the FCC, they take months to process a call sign change, understandable when we were pen-and-paper, but they are slow when everything is done by computer! I am not insulting them, make no mistake. They simply don't have the manpower to do this. Every time they get called, that just generates more paper, and they only hear about the baddies, not the good ops. I don't want them to be out of the enforcement business, or discourage anyone from calling them, BUT if they had the manpower, they could fulfill their mission. If they had the manpower, our taxes would have to be higher--you don't really think that the office of the President is gonna cut from important things like funding for salaried White House Aides just to run the country right! HI! I don't have any answers. All I know is that when I go out into my garden, just to raise a little food for my family, bugs bite me in the butt. But I still keep gardening. I approach radio the same way. But you are right, it's bad, it seems to be getting worse, everyone knows it, and you dont hear about that in W1AW bulletins! Maybe they think that if they don't report it, it will just go away? AND let's not forget about the QUITE FRIENDLY HF BANDS--I break them down as folows:

15 METRES
--mostly cool ops. Some wierd Spanish yakety-yak, it don't sound like ham radio, but I cant make heads or tails outta it. The same two ops, day and nite, for hours on end. I wonder who they are, but the band is big, and they arent hurting anybody. I don't know of I can legally call them, since I don't know if they are hams or not--catch 22 on the regs, so I pass 'em up. The hams here are nice, glad its open more nowadays.

20 METRES
--Called by some the "Queen of the DX Bands". Called by me "The Barracuda Band". A DX calls. A US or a Canadian station answers. The DX replies with the sign given, or part of it. 10 US stations all just give their signs. The DX is confused. He tries again for the orginal contact. 15 US stations answer, all giving their call sign as rapidly and impolitely as possible. THIS IS NOT COMPETITION TO ME. This instead reminds me of driving on RT. 23 to work in the morning. Or driving through Atlanta, Or Dallas-Ft. Worth. Or Detroit. This is not relaxing. This is the loudest mouth getting the QSO. Well, maybe that DX station has learned something about how people treat each other here, after all. Some cultural exchange, eh? No calling the DX station and then giving the US callsign. After all, that would be curteous, especially when several DX contacts are all probagating from approximately the same area and approximately the same time, with approximately the same prefix. NO,letting the DX establish contact with the orginal staion. Oh no, let's take no prisoners!And what frindly QSO's you with stateside stations! Hi! MY Call is: MY Name is:-- My QTH is:-- You are 59. I have a super-duper 100 db gain over a wet noodle into a cast-iron Kalasnakov tube-equipped Amp. 73. Done, that's it. No rag chew in this band! I have had more meaningful conversations with pavement princesses under lamp posts then that.

30 METRES
Mr. Longbow likely has more comment on this "handy" band than me! Almost unoccupied. Open most of the time, day and nite. CW only. Nobody there. Would it be a terrible crime to let the SSB ops there, too???? If tis is not changed, expect this band to show up at an FCC auction soon. The excuse will be that it's underutilized.
Cool ops here, both of them. They have an entire band to themselves. So does "Mr. Newington goes to Washington" have any kinda lobby to remedy this? I don't know. Time for a Guinness...maybe Mr. Longbow and I should toast the end of this band already. And I LIKE CW! So in the end neither he OR I will get to operate there. What a shame. Sure was Just to keep the voice guys out, eh?

40 METRES--
The OLD WORLD DISORDER BAMD. How Governments are gonna agree on a "New World Order" when they have an ITU and they can't EVEN COORDINATE FREQUENCIES FOR YEARS AND YEARS ON END IS CERTAINLY BEYOND ME.I guess that they trust each other, fully. Thats why you run into nice ladies broadcasting pre-recorded four and five letter coded groups to guys who are "ops", but defiantely NOT hams! What a great band. open 24 hours to everywhere. our best band, when sunspots are high OR low. Mr. Newington goes to Washington, (and Berne!) has certainly not solved that one! We put the beginners here from 7.100- to -7.150, arguably the worst place for foreign QRM in the entire spectrum!!! ---NO!!!! We couldn't give 'em 30, even CW--no way! And right here is where a lotta new guys 'start'--and "finish" their HF work. How would you ike to be a NEW CW GUY AND TRY AND WORK THROUGH ALL OF THAT TRASH? Would you really feel 'welcome' to the hobby? Maybe this is why HF os dying, in favour of 2 metres? Think about it! And of course there's lotsa VE stations here. Because the Canadian government says its ok for them the be below 7.150. And the world did not end when they did so. And I can't work 'em voice. Our next door neighbors, for Christ's sake! (Hello, and Welcome to Canada!) Have you ever heard more friendlier ops than the VE's? To each other, and to everybody else. No! because of stupid regs, I cant work 'em in the less-QRM'd lower band, just at the crowded top end, and I am not talking crowded with SSB hams here, I am talking about foreign quasi-governmental trash that has no business here. But then again, the VE's can even travel to Cuba, as I understand it, I can't, and I don't see just how the International Balance of Power would be seriously disrupted if I was allowed to travel there? I was two years old when we had the Cuban Missile Crisis. The USSR is gone, we send foreign aid TO RUSSIA. Times change. They will for Cuba, too, I hope......
The ops you find on fourty are a friendly, hardy, and humourous bunch. they have to be.

80 METRES
The "This Table Is Already Taken" Band, (upper), and "The Nasty AS WE WANNA BE SO WHAT FCC" Band (middle), and OK....cool and friendly CW ops on the lower portion. I like working the Cuban stations there. Very nice guys. What they lack in equipment they make up for in skill, they are cordial, and they slow down for a new guy. They actually have conversations. I love the ones who have a 60 cycle tone. maybe they use an old Russian Flourescent light bulb modulated and powered by a '59 pre-revolution rusted out and many times rebuilt Chevy, anyhow that's what I picture. And some day, I want to meet them, in spite of their circumstances, they are cool operators, definately part of the true fraternity of amateur radio. AND someday we will be allowed to travel there.

Did you hear that the FCC does not issue 'specific frequencies' to individual ops? Well, can you tell that by listening, or God-help-you, DAREING to call CQ on a vacant frequency, IF you can find one that isn't QRN'ed to complete disuse? You will find nothing but exclusive nets here, and I DO mean exclusive. Just try joining in sometime. Most nets consist of all of two ops, usually two or three very,very old ops. I am talking old here. and since they have had the sames QSO's here since Marconi sent an "S", and stole the show from Tesla, hey why talk to those 'newbies'? Being 39 and listening here at least makes you feel young again, I guess youngesters are supposed to be seen and not heard. THESE ARE NOT THE OLD CW GUYS, as they will work anyone. No there are the guys who want to keep CW, but hey, they haven't touched a key since The Jazz Singer was released as a "talkie".
The Nasty mid-band crowd: Not old guys, they really don't fit into a category other than foul-mouthed, mean, nasty, folks....kinda the Goofuses of the airwaves. If QST had a "GOOFUS and Gallant" section like Highlight's Magazines for kids does, yes, they are defiantly the "Goofuses" of radio. Howard Stern is at least pleasant to his guests, while he's making with the outlandish talk. I think for this Howard even gets fined now and then, as I understand it. Not so these guys.
They don't need white sheets to hide behind, they got radios!

160 METRES

Almost as old and exclusive as the top of 80, only, thank God, some DX every now and then breaks through. These ops seem startled when there is a band opening, they don't usually like it, it's just too much change all at once for them.I am afraid to listen here for long, I may die of boredom and fall on my mike (or CW)key, and no one would know about it for days-they would just think that I am a normal op on this band, since you can't really tell the living from the dead here. Sorta like a tree falling in the woods and nobody hears it. These nets are also replaced frequently in the summertime by God's probagation experiments with static. Maybe it's Zuess throwing lightning bolts (he hit me once...), but whatever it is, it's welcome compaired to these boring ops. I think that God sends this static because he is bored and displeased that he has given them the knowledge to use radio, and they don't seem to know what to do with it.

So, I finish yet another Guinness, and wish you all 73, time for real entertainment, Clinton's on TV!