N2EY wrote:


Hams are licensed by the feds and the vast majority of them follow the rules -
all the rules. Which means that even though they could run superpower, they
don't, and even though their rigs go outside the ham bands, they won't use 'em
there. Etc. Part of the reason is that the FCC knows where hams live, etc., but
a bigger part is that "it's just not done" by hams.

Most licensed car drivers follow the rules of the road even if there
are no cops around. Most understand that the system works only
because the rules are followed, and thus most do follow the rules.
And the same for most hams on the ham bands. There's little point
calling CQ out of band as you won't find other hams out of band.
And there is plenty of interesting things to do in band. As for
super power, our legal limit is on the order of a kilowatt (varies
a bit depending on mode and subband) which is plenty enough if
you really gotta snag that rare DX. Throw in a beam if you
want (though beams for 160m are kinda hard to come by...).
Other rules like "no business traffic" are there to protect
our bands from being taken over by business users. No broadcasting
is also there to keep the bands useable for normal 2 way comms
(think about how often you actually push the PTT button or
activate the VOX, maybe 15 minutes a day at most unless you're
calling CQ in a contest). That's a duty cycle of 1% or less
for most of us on days we turn the rig on. And if you only do
that once every 2 weeks it drops to 0.07% duty cycle. Broadcasters
are on about 100% of the time, and the bands would fill up pretty
quickly with trash. Thus that rule.

We don't have that many stupid rules nowadays. Used to be you
had to mail a letter to the FCC telling if you were going to be
mobile for more than 2 weeks. But Phil (IIRC) mentioned that
the FCC never acted on any of that stuff, so why bother making
hams do it? So it was dropped.


IOW, most of hamdom is pretty straight-arrow law-abiding.

I've committed a few infractions by accident (phone
in the CW band for example) but soon caught it and corrected
it myself. No need for the FCC to kick down the door....
The FCC knows that people occasionally make mistakes and
only acts if you keep on doing it for long periods of time.
Then it's on purpose and you know it.


Freeband is exactly the opposite. Almost everyhting hams consider important,
they ignore, and vice versa. So why would one be attracted to the other?

There's an outside chance that some of them don't know that ham radio
exists. Nahhhh.... not likely at all....