RadioBanter - View Single Post - CW-forever Guys are gonna go balistic!

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KØHB wrote:

Do you see the disparity, particularly for Generals? Why should it
exist? What did Generals do to merit losing so much spectrum?

Failed to upgrade is the trite answer.

Maybe so!

Absolutely so. This thing is a watered-down repeat of the 1960s
"restructuring".

Note how, in more than one Report and Order, FCC has pointed out how
little testing it takes to upgrade to Extra. FCC has repeatedly turned
down all proposals that would have granted instant upgrades, like
making all Advanceds into Extras. Maybe it's time to take the hint.

Note the lack of Generals expressing any opinions on the
subject. If they're not in here complaining about losing cw/rtty space
why should us OF Extras care about the subject one way or the other?

It sets a bad precedent.

In what respect?

Maybe it's the result of the ARRLs
pestering the FCC to publish a response to the NPRMs. So the FCC did
and damn the torpedoes so this is what we got. For now. Bought the FCC
more time to quietly come up with their "real" omnibus NPRM/R&O?

I think we're on to the same idea.

I wonder what FCC really thinks of us hams.

PIAs. Their problem.

Sure, they say certain
things - because they have to. But consider what amateur radio may look
like to at least some of them:

We have huge amounts of spectrum set aside for us by international
treaty, and we yelp at the loss of even small amounts of it to other
services.We don't generate any real revenue, yet we keep asking for
more enforcement.

Users of other services complain about interference from us (even when
it's not our fault) and we complain about interference from power
lines, appliances, etc., that don't seem to bother anybody else. We
raise holy heck over new technologies like BPL, even though the
state-of-the-art experts who design the new technologies say we
amateurs are wrong.

The "relationship" between ham radio and the FCC is no different
overall than the way the FAA gets pounded by the recreational aviation
crowd and the Department of the Interior gets Excedrin headaches from
the hiking, camping, hunting and fishing bunch. The ongoing regulatory
brawls between the skimobile/ATV users vs. the preservationists make
our little code test dispute look laughable in comparison. When it's
all said and done the regulatory agencies have been instructed by law
and funded by Congress to deal with the sometimes goofy issues we the
public stick them with - since it's *us* who are paying them to do it.

And now the big one:

We amateurs send in way too many petitions/proposals to FCC, and then
cannot agree about what we really want.

I think what FCC expects is for us hams to argue amongst ourselves and
work out what rules we really want *before* sending in any
petitions/proposals. Then, when a proposal is sent in and FCC gives it
an RM number, the comments are overwhelmingly positive and FCC's job is
easy.

Look at the recent "bandwidth" proposals. ARRL sends in one, a group
called CTT sends in another. Both are given RM numbers and very short
comment periods. Both get a ton of comments - overwhelmingly opposed!
CTT is opposed even more than ARRL (something like 7 or 8 to 1 against
for both of them).

Could be that the folks at FCC who have to go through all that are
angry at having to deal with it? Two groups who both claim to know
what's best for amateur radio sent in proposals that cost a lot of FCC
resources.

But neither group gets widespread amateur support *first*,
so the comments are an overwhelming "NO!" to both proposals.

The Morse Code test issue is even more of a mess. Treaty changes, FCC
gets *18* proposals! Huh? Some are poles apart while others are
virtually identical. They gotta deal with 18 RMs and comments on all of
them.

No sympathy. See above about who gets paid to do what.

One self-proclaimed "PROFESSIONAL", who isn't even a ham and
doesn't intend to be one, sends them hundreds of pages of comments and
reply comments, which they have to wade through.

No way. The FCC staffers who deal with these things don't live in a
vacuum, they're not stupid and they know bull**** when it lands in
their inboxes and they know how to handle it. By now they've long since
gotten wise to Anderson's childish antics and his "comments" just get
rubber-stamped "READ" and tossed into the outbox without further ado.
He's not having any impact at all at the FCC and he knows it, he's
trolling for folk like you who get their knickers in a twist over his
nonsense.

Now look at what Industry Canada dealt with. The national society
worked out a compromise on the issue, got consensus from its members
and the general Canadian amateur radio community, *then* made a
proposal - complete with detailed poll results. Proposal was supported
in comments and sailed right through. RAC made IC's work easy.

When's the last time *any* proposal sent to FCC by hams (not just ARRL)
got widespread support in the comments?

Back when I worked in Canada for a number of months and it was a real
eye-opener. One big lesson I learned is that Yanks in general don't
understand that in many respects Canada is culturally quite different
from the U.S. even though the language is functionally identical and
the border is wide open by international standards. In a nutshell my
take has been that Canadians are far more likely to come to a consensus
than we are by their general nature. So are most of the Europeans.
We're the global odd jobs, we're notorious all over the planet for
preferring food fights to regulatory peace and quiet. We is what we is,
the old "herding cats" syndrome in play.

73 de Jim, N2EY

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