This is, perhaps, the last gasps of the dying hobby of ham radio. I know that I, like many others, had neither the desire nor the time to bother with morse code, and that left me parked at a level of "no-code tech" for about the last 10 years. Over the years, I have pondered why this morse code was deemed necessary - it seemed a bit like requiring our military to demonstrate competency with a muzzle-loading firearm before being allowed to use an M-16. I know that in this area- Bucks County PA. - the ham bands are mostly silent and I also know that there's hardly a "thrill" for me to "make contact" with some staticy station in Bora-Bora when I can (and do) video chat with people all over the world via the Internet. I know that there's new various digital models that are of interest to some, but when I wake up tomorrow and my wife asks me what I want for christmas, I don't think that now that I can work HF that I'll be asking for an HF rig. It's a shame, because in many ways, the whole ham radio thing was a great place for geeks to play with hardware. I think that today, it's more about buiding computers and stuff like you see in makezine.com not spending $30,000 on radio gear to send "di-dah's" around the globe.