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Michael Coslo · **July 23, 2007 ARS License Numbers**

wrote:
On Jul 31, 2:52 pm, Michael Coslo wrote:
wrote:

The big mistake ARRL (and CTT, and many others) make is that they
don't really know how popular their proposals are *before* submitting
them to FCC.
Whatever is the point of *any* amateur radio group submitting a Part
97 proposal that generates 70, 80, 90% negative comments? All that
does is annoy FCC, IMHO.
The way I see it is that indeed the proposal was a big mistake. The
folks who were all about the robot stations effectively took over the
process, and hoped to push things through with their agenda intact.

I don't know if 'the folks who were all about the robot stations' took
over the process or not. But that doesn't matter.

I disagree. I believe it matters very much.

What I do know is that there was a widespread *perception* that RBB
was "all about robots" and conducted behind closed doors. That
*perception* was pure poison when comment-time came around. It
galvanized so many hams into writing anti-RBB comments that the good
parts of the proposal were lost in the uproar.

A very wise man once told me that if enough people have a perception of
something, it doesn't matter what the truth is, the perception becomes
the truth. And as hard as that may be to swallow, it is just how things are.

The really sad thing is that the BoD, who OK'd the proposal, didn't
see all that ahead of time.

This is not an unusual thing. Many different groups see their own
interests as paramount to the "big picture" in Ham radio (though it
isn't exclusive to the ARS)

Of course.

And the way you get around that sort of resistance is to let all
groups have their say, and come up with proposals that give everybody
something of what they want.

I've sat through lectures from Emergency
Operation fans on how amateur radio MUST change to acommodate their
particular view. Pro contesters/anti contesters, the different folks
involved all have a vision of what the service needs to be.

Sure. And they're almost all right! The trick is to make room for
everyone.

Actually I'm not so sure about everyone being right. My experience has
been that people who are intensely interested in one thing or the other
don't believe that others needs are of sufficient interest. Which is why
it is important that any BOD is interested in the big picture.

For example, I think WinLink/Pactor/robots are a great thing in
Amateur Radio. I think many of our rules on them are outdated and in
need of rewriting. I even think the "no-data-in-the-phone-bands" rule
has to go.

I think that the stations have to become a whole lot better behaved
before they are allowed anywhere. The business of just opening up
whenever and wherever is bad stuff.

But at the same time, I do not think that simply allowing robot
operation everywhere is a good thing. That's why I opposed both RBB
and CTT.

As a person chased off the air (or at least to another frequency) by
the machines, I couldn't agree more. There has been a lot of discussion
re the PSK31 "segment", with a lot of people telling us to "just move".
Yeah, I guess we could. The nature of PSK31 is such that making it's
practitioners fly all over the band in search of a free spot is a great
way to kill it. especially for those who use the rockbound radios. A lot
of the PSK units are just a rockbound transceiver tied to a laptop. It
got bad enough that at least in the Digipan PSK software, the programmer
put in receive only for the robots so that we could ID them and complain
to the F.C.C. All that fuss over 1 3KHz piece of the band!

In the case of the RBB, the big picture was circumvented, and the result
was predictable and hams did their job. Some people look at it as a
failure. I look at as a shining success. A bad idea was beat down.

It was a failure in my view because:

1) A lot of good ideas in RBB were beat down too
2) The beat-down of the bad ideas should have happened *before* it was
ever sent to FCC, not after.
3) The proposal asked a lot of hams to give something up, without
giving them anything in return, or not enough in return. Meanwhile,
other hams would gain something without giving anything up. Or at
least it seemed that way to many hams.

This is why proposals like RBB and CTT go nowhere, IMHO.

And that is why I consider it a good thing. I agree with you that ideas
should be tested out before submission.

I really strongly believe that when special interest subgroups get hold
of the process, they invariably subvert it to their interest. While
there may have been good ideas in RBB, the bad ones were bad enough that
it was worth losing the whole thing. Hopefully the BOD paid attention
to that fact.

Suppose somebody came up with a composite mode that combined SSB voice
and a PSK31-like data mode in a bandwidth of less than 3 kHz. I think
that would be a good thing for Amateur Radio, and under RBB it would
be legal. Under current rules it's not allowed on US HF amateur radio,
though, and with the mess created by RBB and CTT, it won't be for many
years to come.

IMHO, one of the reasons it takes *years* for FCC to make even simple
changes to Part 97 (like dumping the code test) is because we USA hams
don't get our act together before sending proposals to FCC.

Look at how Canada handled the code test thing. They sent out surveys,
got ideas, and put together an innovative plan that generated
consensus among VE hams. Only when they could point to hard numbers
about how much widespread support their was for their proposal did
they send it to Industry Canada.

And Industry Canada put the change in place with little hassle. The
whole process was a done deal long before the USA got around to
changing Part 97, and IMHO the Canadian change generated less
animosity among VE hams than the USA process did here.

We can do it also. At least in principle. Practice will be a lot
harder, as I suspect that we might be a little more of a contentious lot
than our VE brethren.

- 73 de mike KB3EIA -