K?HB wrote on Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:59:36 EDT:

On Jun 18, 3:56 am, Phil Kane wrote:

I've spent two successful careers in professional telecommunications,
and maintain strong personal and professional ties in the industry.
Up until about 5 years ago Amateur Radio enjoyed a very positive
reputation among the "pros", but today we are mostly viewed as
obstructionist old coots without a clue, and it's getting worse.

Well, I've only had one career in radio-electronics counting my
particular military service. "Successful?" For me? Well, I want
for
nothing having finished it. As a mostly-licensed-NOT-in-amateur-
radio
for all of that time, I would make your "5 years" into 20 or 25
years.
The pro telecommunications and radio-electronics industries were
established and grown by NON-amateurs from the get-go, despite all
the legendary hoopla from old-timer-hams.


This is absolutely the wrong time to be making enemies of the agency
which controls our service. Kid yourselves not, our Amateur Radio
service exists only so long as FCC considers us "worth the bother",
and the recent behavior of ARRL seems, in my opinion, deliberately
calculated to raise our "bother quotient".

The ARRL (I am a voting member) rather blew it big-time with their
"Regulation By Bandwidth" proposal. Both their original petition and
subsequent retraction of that looked to my non-legal eyes as written
by undergrad law students. Real attorneys would have fun with such
things and would have to really work to try to find out what those
documents were trying to say or convey.

One of the signs of the Newington group feeling their own mortality is
the "Diamond Terrace" proposal and "membership (for extra money)."
[call it the mausoleum syndrome] I have nothing against a building
reconstruction or spiffying-up a place of work. But buying a brick
for
cash just to have some quasi-immortality by members? Okay, if they
need cash inflow so much, then the League ought to cater towards
those three-fourths of all US ham licensees who are NOT members.


We should expect no
support from the pros when FCC decides they've had enough of us; in
fact we should expect them to cheer from the sidelines as we are sent
off the field of play. Recent news out of Newington portends to me a
hastening of that event.

I don't share your gloom and doom there. I say US amateur radio
will NOT suffer any near-future demise. The FCC full well recognizes
that amateur radio IS a hobby (even if they don't say so outright).
The FCC also recognizes that other RF emitters are also for hobby
activities; see the 100 channels allocated for model radio control
use at 72+ MHz, well after the first HF CB creation. Hobbyists are
ALSO citizens and the federal government is obliged to listen to
them as well as the evil big-money capitalists (who are also
citizens).

If there be danger, then it is to future allocations of and about
amateur radio. WARC-79 gave international hams new bands in HF.
But, that was 28 years ago. What have the US hams gotten lately?
A few individual channels at "60m?" Those 60m channels was
originally a League proposal for a whole band, not a few channels.

Newington has always been oriented to HF. That's not where the
future of radio is...the future is above 30 MHz where most of the
rest of the radio world has gone and expanded. If the ARRL wants to
concentrate on spectrum territory where their core membership
operates at and using old tried-and-true modes, fine, but I see that
as just catering to a minority of a minority. I see it as just plain
IGNORING the majority of licensees. That ain't leadership.

Sincerely, Len, AF6AY