On Wed, 19 Apr 2006 02:31:36 +0000, Iitoi wrote:

policy-ham Wrote:
The May issue of Worldradio Magazine came today and has a big article
talking about how ham radio is going 100% digital very soon. The
writer
says it will be less than 10 years before all SSB, CW and whatever is
gone and hams are forced to have digital radios. Its titled
Digitalization and starts on page 40.

I read the article. It's laughable.

Pasternak starts off with some false hypotheses and then tries to use
logic to build upon them. Trouble is, when logic is applied to false
hypotheses, the conclusions reached are meaningless.

In any case, I'm not worried about so-called digital communications
becoming mandatory. Somehow Pasternak gets IBOC broadcasting confused
with what other people would call digital broadcasting (as in digital
TV), and then winds up at the very odd conclusion that the IBOC
interference experience on the broadcast bands will lead to the
enforcement of purely digital communications in the amateur bands.

Some broadcasters claim that IBOC is a disaster because it is a
proprietary system, because it causes adjacent channel interference,
and because sky wave propagation seriously degrades it. They suggest
instead a system called "CAM-D," but the FCC isn't listening.

It's kind of like the BPL issue all over again. The FCC is simply
doing what it wants to do in spite of highly qualified experts who
disagree with it.

My view is that time will eventually embarrass the politicians at the
FCC and prove that they were wrong all along in attempting to force
controversial technical changes down an unwilling public's throat.

Before I'd ever purchase all new "digital" ham equipment, I'd simply
go off the air for good. If thousands of other hams do that, then
what happens to the "pool of skilled radio operators" that Pasternak
babbles on about?

Nope. It's too absurd to ever happen. Pasternak must be living in La
La Land.