HRO still won't be carrying the THP low-drive amps, until the FCC wakes up
and realizes what a dumb rule that is...

From a practical standpoint, what does it matter how much power an
ilegal operator is running? I mean if these yokals are already out of
their band (I presume the FCC is concerned about the freebanders) what
does it matter if they are running 25 watt transceivers or kw amps?
It's 16 db difference, who cares?

A bootlegger operating with 25 watts is likely to interfere with
legitimate licensed operators of the band in question.

A bootlegger operating with a kilowatt "linear" amplifier is likely to
interfere with legitimate licensed operators of the band in question,
and with users of bands which are harmonically related to the band in
question (a lot of the cheap "linear" amps are anything but linear,
and splatter quite badly), and with TV and radio reception for a
significant distance around the transmission site (fundamental
overload affecting the wide-open RF front end circuitry), and with
people listening to stereo and using the telephone (rectification
breakthrough).

The number of people who are adversely affected by the unlicensed
operation goes up quite sharply once an outboard amplifier is added
to the equation.

The real concern ought to be that
they are operating on frequencies that are not assigned for them. If
them operating there is a problem, why not go after them and put them
off the air. In fact (I amaze myself with my insight sometimes !)
wouldn't it be easier to locate them if they were running some power?
Wouldn't it make direction finding easier?

You do have a point there, at least for base-station operation.
Unfortunately, it's rather more difficult to take advantage of the
"louder is easier to locate" issue when the illegal operator is
mobile... and it's my impression that a lot of the illegally-
high-powered CB and freeband operators are mobile.

Also, the "locate them and shut them down" approach assumes that
resources are available to actually locate the illegal operators. The
FCC seems to have largely abandoned (or, at least, seriously scaled
back) its own field-enforcement efforts, over the past couple of
decades... if I recall correctly this dates back as far as the Carter
administration. The FCC now seems to be depending largely on the ham
community to report suspected cases of freeband/unlicensed-10-meter
operation.

I suspect that the FCC is trying to deal with the problem at an
"earlier" stage of the chain... stopping production and sale of the
amplifiers, rather than trying to track down individual users.
They don't seem to be particularly active/effective even at that,
though, considering the ease with which one can locate numerous
companies making/selling such amps (and easily-modifiable
freeband-capable radios).

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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