Blame It on OPEC

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I keep saying that I am not writing another word about the elimination of the Morse Code requirement for an FCC ham license. So this will be my last statement: I say blame it on OPEC.

At the start of 2007, I came across the Long Delayed Echoes blog, where Jeff KE9V made his 2007 New Years predictions, which included this:

Having thrown the gates wide open by eliminating the Morse code requirement for all amateur testing we learn that there’s nobody out there waiting to join the party. I predict no significant increase of new licensees in 2007.

Of course, Jeff’s prediction turned out to be correct (again!). The Morse Code requirement is irrelevant…which caused me to write this blog entry: Morse Code Testing: Irrelevant.

But yesterday, I see that Bruce Perens K6BP, founder of No Code International, says that “No Code Came Too Late to Help Ham Radio“. The Jeff KE9V response is here. Bruce is well-known in the Open Source, AMSAT and other techie communities, so I don’t dismiss his opinion lightly. Maybe he has a point…could it have happened differently? So that started me thinking again, which may or may not be a good thing and it often turns into another page on this blog.

So why did the Morse Code requirement emerge as the way to “keep the riff raff” out of ham radio? Well, that’s easy….it was because of those CBers (Citizens Band operators). The CB band was filled with a bunch of unlicensed, undisciplined fools that destroyed that radio service. It was obvious ham radio needed a barrier to keep them out. (Might have thought about an IQ test but that might be un-American.) Morse Code seemed to be the obvious tool.

Why was CB such a mess? Back in its early years, the CB folks were quite civilized and operated with both courtesy and call letters. But in 1974, the US Congress established a nationwide speed limit of 55 MPH. A large number of truck drivers decided that this was a really bad idea and adopted CB radios as the way to avoid speed traps on the interstate highways. The general public didn’t take long to catch on and suddenly every car is sporting a CB antenna, cruising down the highway giving out smokie reports and talking like a truck driver. The FCC Rules and call letters were quickly tossed aside. This really was a pop culture thing that just exploded. Even people that didn’t speed got caught up in the fun of watching for them smokies.
The 55 MPH speed limit was an emergency response to the 1973 Oil Crisis. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decided to stop shipping oil to countries that supported Israel. The price of oil jumped to $12 per barrel. (Geez, that doesn’t sound all that bad this week.) The US Congress decided that if we all drove slower, we would use less fuel so they instituted the 55 MPH speed limit.

So if those dang OPEC guys had not raised the price of oil, we wouldn’t have had the 55 MPH speed limit in the 1970s. The CB boom would not have happened and there would have been no irrational fear of this “riff raff” getting into ham radio. This means that the issue of the Morse Code requirement might have been addressed with Logic and Thinking (instead of Fear and Religious Zeal). The Morse Code requirement might have been dropped a decade earlier.

Wait a minute! Maybe it was those guys in Newington trying to keep their favorite mode alive? Yeah, they probably used King Hussein of Jordan (JY1) as a means to influence OPEC and make the whole thing happen, all funded by my ARRL dues.

73, Bob K0NR

2 Replies to “Blame It on OPEC”

  2. “The price of oil jumped to $12 per barrel. (Geez, that doesn’t sound all that bad this week.)”

    I saw a forbes.com chart via the Drudge Report showing then vs. now oil prices over the past 150-ish years. In today’s dollars, that $12 barrel of oil would cost around $110.