K9JY

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SSB is dying -- help save ham radio

Noting that several e-mail reflectors and other ham news outlets have said that over 10,000 CW logs were sent in for the CQ WW DX Contest, I have to agree with K3NG -- it's time to Save Phone!After all, K3NG waxes:

...we don't test for phone operating skill anymore. Today's amateurs are lazy. They're not going to try phone operation unless you force them to do it. You need to test for it so they get proficient at it and want to use it. Phone operation always works; everyone has mouths and can speak.

For those of you new to ham radio, these were the arguments against getting rid of testing for CW for licenses several years ago. And shows that testing for modes doesn't necessarily mean the death of a mode. On the contrary, now that phone is in a cyclical decline, it is more than hilarious to see some competition between phone and CW.Just think, between CW and digital modes, we might need more of that SSB spectrum...