Robert Casey wrote in message ...
N2EY wrote:


The original 1913 reason for technical qualifications was to prevent
interference to nonamateurs caused by improper adjustment of amateur
transmitters.

How much interference to nonamateurs is caused by improper adjustment of
amateur transmitters today? Reading the FCC enforcement letters, such
interference today seems to be more a case of intentional modification of
amateur equipment by a lawless few to operate on nonamateur frequencies.

It seems that you have to violate rules "on purpose" several times
before the FCC
starts working on it.

I think it all comes down to complaints, too.

Modern equipment rarely causes problems (like
excessive
splatter or harmonics). I'm talking about stuff from the major
manufacturers
(Yeacomwood), not the "freeband" "linayes".

That's very true.

And it raises the question of "why should hams have to know all sorts
of theory stuff when the original reason for that knowledge is largely
gone"

(similar to the above anticodetest argument - and just as incomplete).

And who hasn't, by mistake, operate the wrong mode in some subband?

Me. I've *never* done that. Not by mistake, not intentionally either.

Like
answering a foreign phone CQ on 7140?

Not even once.

Oops... Most people will not make
a habit of doing that, but once or twice over the years.

Mistakes happen. But when you read the FCC enforcement letters, it
becomes clear that mistakes, particularly technical ones, aren't
really much of a problem anymore in the ARS.

The FCC realizes that
errors do happen, and that most people will realize the error and
correct it themselves
without the FCC having to do anything about it.

That's why we have OOs. The OO program was instituted so that hams
would find out about such problem from each other rather than FCC.

73 de Jim, N2EY