29 JAN, 2005 - 1425 CST

Jerry Kutche, N9LYA

Hello Jerry...

I have been slow in responding to your inquiries because the ARRL
Executive Committee held a conference call Monday evening before the
January ARRL board meeting to discuss its recommendations for changes
to the ARRL's proposal to regulate ARS sub-bands by bandwidth rather
than mode. Then most of us were delayed in our return home by the
"blizzard of '05" - I was a day and a half late getting home. And now,
I'm still recovering from a mutation of the flu I caught in Connecticut
that was not covered in the flu inoculation I received last fall.

In actuality, the ARRL proposal is a bit of a hybrid of the two concepts
in an effort to keep from displacing existing users or at least to minimize
changing pre-existing uses. At its regular meeting last fall, the ARRL EC
voted to include the small HF sub-bands that currently allow automatic
(fully robotic at both ends of the circuit) packet and other digital message
forwarding. As you know, the draft proposal under development for the last
three plus years, would eliminate this set of small HF sub-bands. During
this conference call the EC reversed itself and removed its recommendation
of retaining this set of HF sub-bands. The decision was not unanimous and
votes on some of the other issues in this proposal were also split.

Therefore, the full ARRL board accepted the first part of the EC's fall
meeting recommendations of the bandwidth petition proposal, and asked the
EC to continue its discussion of the unresolved issues. The minutes of
the January 2005 board meeting are now on the ARRL web site. Rather than
type in all the words here, I refer you to Minute 38 of this document for
an understanding of what the Executive Committee is still tasked with doing
before the July 2005 board meeting. I'm not happy with the EC's reversal on
automatic forwarding, but it will again be discussed at the spring Executive
Committee meeting. The board meeting minutes can be read at:

http://www.arrl.org/announce/board-0501/

Due to the FCC-induced log-jam of Amateur Radio petitions now before the
Commission going clear back to "Novice Refarming", we are in no hurry to
add another petition to the pile until the others, including "license
restructuring" have at least reached Proposed Rule-Making (PRM) status.
This could happen as early as this coming May, but don't hold your breath.
The five man FCC appears to be going through a major re-shuffling and we
are not certain how this will affect current filed petitions. There are
simply too many variables in this equation to make a well reasoned guess.

In closing, I must emphasize that the HF auto-forwarding issue is far from
decided at this point. And even after the full board renders its decision
there are no certainties about when and how the FCC will deal with this
ARRL regulatory proposal.

73 - Dick Isely, W9GIG