At 08:23 AM 11/18/96 -1000, you wrote:
>> From: Mark F. Zegel
>> 73, W4MZ (some dead guy's call)
>
>This epitomizes my feelings against the vanity callsign program.
>Some young squirt who gets his license from memorizing the exam
>questions and passing a "fill in the blanks" code test then wants
>to look like an OTer by grabbing a 1x2 call and on top of it
>insults the deceased previous owner.
>
>Shameful.
>
>Jeff KH2PZ / KH6
Sorry Jeff,
yet again, you are off base. If the world were left to guys like you, we
would still be using AM and spark. First of all, I will concede to you that
Mark's comment is out of line. However, at worst he is guilty of poor
judgement. To call him a "plug and play" ham is unfair and unfounded.
Secondly, let's get away from this myth that today's hams all memorize the
answers to pass the exam. To infer that those of us who were licensed 30 or
more years ago, knew the theory cold, is pure malarkey. The ARRL license
manual of that time was almost a verbatim copy of the FCC exam. There are
many hams from 60-50-40-30 (my generation) and later hams that simply
memorized the ARRL license manual. Please don't perpetuate the myth that it
wasn't done. It was. This "little lie" has been told so many time that it
now has a truth of it's own.
Finally, the fellows who held many of these calls now being reassigned did
not own the calls. They are not part of their personal legacy. The bottom
line is our calls are a way for the FCC to identify us, pure and simple.We
could be using some of the ARMY SOI calls from the Vietnam era just as easy.
A couple of my favorites were "Gateway-Peepers" and "Cubical-Duke."The new
automated SOI is not as much funor sexy; BX6A etc. I'll even bet some of
the guys who held these calls in the past were not the greatest of fellows
and believe it or not, might have memorized the theory exam too.
So what say. Why not call a truce, stop the nasty-grams that don't pertain
to 160 operation and as Jack Webb used to say in Dragnet "Just the facts mam."
Craig NX1G
soon to change
PS I do hope this is the end of this "thread."
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