The Deutscher Telegrafie Club e.V. is very active in supporting the interests of telegraphy in the Amateur Radio Service. In doing so, there are general interests regarding the Amateur Radio Service besides CW that need to be taken into account as well.
One main aspect - fitting our statutes perfectly - is our engagement to retain the obligation to have to pass a morse code exam to get access to all previleges on the bands below 30 MHz.
PCI - Pro Code Initiative:
More or less as a kind of counterpoise to the well know NCI (No Code Initiative) (just to name one of many) the idea to create a PCI (= Pro Code Initiative) was born.
This PCI is intended to focus the interests of all those, who - like we do - favour the retainment of the morse code exams. Having received a wide spread positive response so far - and we are happy about that for sure - we feel encouraged to proceed with that task: meanwhile it is perfectly clear that all those in favour of the retainment of the morse code exams up to now just have been lacking a suitable platform to express their ideas, quite in contrast to all those small but rather active groups in favour of an abolishment of the obligatory morse codes exams.
After having initiated the PCI idea the Deutscher Telegrafie Club - also being supported by a lot of positve mail coming in - established contact to other CW clubs discussing this important aspect and working towards a better support of these interests shared by many, many radio amateurs, in order not to let these interests disappear into the background vs. those of the opponents of obligatory morse code exams.
We feel that majorities need to expess their interests to gain consideration, therefore DTC did create PCI, and further action has been planned and is going to be started.
ADSL, VDSL and else:
Very much with gaining the knowledge about these ultra fast digital subscriber lines using unscreaned (!) twisted wire the possible fatal impact they would probably have on HF radio reception became apparent, despite the fact that the future providers of theses services did claim that no such problems would arise.
Just to make it perfectly clear: DTC is by no means against ultra fast digital subscriber lines, they may be very much needed.
However, we criticize spitefully the apparently "tolerable" pollution of the HF radio spectrum by these systems at the moment. We strongly stress the need to lower the radiation levels allowed considerably, to avoid any problems to ALL radio services by the planned future wide spread establishment of these services.
In Germany we are still very much aware of the problems that did manifest themselves to become an unsolvable interference problem arising from the CATV systems. Amateurs were told that these systems "do not cause any interferences, and if so, these are easily overcome" - the contrary happened, not only that the interferences prevailed: the provider even has not obtained a legal permit to use these frequencies so far..., but he does operate the system anyway! As a system already in wide spread use now, any change of the present situation is difficult and very much less likely.
Regarding ADSL and VDSL, DTC was the first radio amateur club to address the authorities in charge demanding remedy, whereby our demands were supported by results and data from experiments of future providers of these systems and well founded calculations.
Most authorities addressed were astonished to learn about these systems from DTC at the first place, and we were very surprised that any such system obviously can be planned and experimented with without the prior information of ALL authorities that normally should know about it anyway...
Our efforts are continued to help avoid any such future interferences. Our actions are very much needed, if we ALL want to enjoy our amateur radio hobby in future!
While ultra fast data subscriber lines may be very much needed, we also very much need to have these services established in such a way as to avoid any interferences to radio services.
It can be done, but you need to want to do it!
DTC is working hard to make the providers WANT to do it!
DTC encourages telegraphy use on the amateur radio bands:
Considering the need to encourage the use of telegraphy on the amateur radio bands, and because there is nothing better to demonstrate the importance of telegraphy but being present and constantly use it on the bands, DTC has created CW Activity Weeks (CWAW) and CW awards (CWYC, CW-PX-EU).
Primary idea was to reward "normal" telegraphy use, less so to favour top CW achievements, e.g. to create something not primarily intended to be for the CW "freaks" but rather very much so for the "ordinary CW operator like you and me".
Very soon, additional offers will enlarge the palette created.
Also encouraging the use of CW on our bands - besides providing informations - DTC established the transmission of its weekly and monthly CW QTCs, which regularly are followed by QSL traffic.