No More Morse Code Requirement
Being a somewhat lapsed amateur radio operator (KE3ML), I was interested to find out that the FCC, in a long-overdue change, has removed the Morse Code testing requirement for all classes of amateur radio licenses.
When I got my license, back in 1994 or so, I passed all the written elements and but the 20 WPM code exam (and went straight from nothing to what was then “advanced class”. (Thus came my group B callsign.) A few months later I took the 20 WPM exam and passed it handily, and upgraded to “amateur extra”, the highest available class.
Now the same thing is available to anyone who passes all the written elements.
Am I bitter that future amateur radio operators won’t have to jump the hurdles that I did? Not in the slightest. Since passing the tests in 1994, and listening to the various noise and nonsense on local repeaters and the 40-meter amateur band, I have long ago decided that the code exam represented nothing other than an initiation ritual, and that it provided no actual value to the amateur radio service.
Enjoy using CW, if that is what you want. I am glad my children can enter the amateur radio service without having to go through hazing.
(For what it’s worth, the old newsgroup rec.radio.amateur.policy has descended into almost an entire cesspool of nonsense. I looked at it today for the first time in 10 years. There’s almost no amateur radio discussed there, just trolls discussing ... heaven alone only knows what. I still see a few of the same players from a decade ago, but mostly just total garbage. Sic transit gloria mundi.)