The Netherlands' 2nd Largest Amateur Society Votes Overwhelmingly for the Abolition of Morse Testing as a Requirement for Full-privilege HF Licenses!

Peter Halpin, PE1MHO, the National Chairman of NCI's newly-formed Netherlands National Chapter attended the VRZA annual general meeting on Saturday, May 6, 2000 as an invited guest. The VRZA is the 2nd largest amateur organization in the Netherlands, after VERON, the IARU member society, and participates with the VERON and the RDR (the radio regulatory agency in The Netherlands) in the "amateur overleg" ... a forum for communicating ideas for changes. modernization,  and other improvements in amateur regulations to the RDR.

The "Morse question" was discussed, and the VRZA members were given plenty of objective information. The discussion was reportedly quite lively, but all parties were reported to have shown a great deal of respect for other's opinions. In the end, the VRZA Chairman suggested that they vote on one single proposal which was distilled from all the proposals made. 

All members voted on three options to select the policy that the VRZA Board of Directors should follow:

• #1 Abolition of the Morse test, with acceptance (under protest) of a 5wpm interim stage. (It was made abundantly clear that 5wpm would be just that, an interim stage, if adopted at all), 
  
• #2 Introduction of 5wpm as the new standard morse speed,  and
  
• #3 Maintaining the status quo.

The voting went like this:

• Abolition:         66% For,    32% Against,        1% Abstentions
  
• 5wpm:             14% For,    83% Against,        3% Abstentions
  
• Status quo:     27%For,      71% Against,        2% Abstentions