FCC Denies RM-11392

Winlink

I have a idea. One frequency per band for Winlink NOT IN THE VOICE AREA and away from Rtty with enough room around it so they can have their toy. What is so darn special about winlink? It seems that they want to turn our ham bands into one big chat room (like irc) it seems that they are trying to get rid of the voice so that winlink can get rich. they don't care about us. They try to tell us it will help emergency services. But the truth is they want to have a e-mail gateway. Once Winlink becomes a reality say bye to the bands as it will take over. If Winlink takes over might as well allow bpl. All it is about is money. Who cares about the little guys (us). All we need to do is keep being a thorn in their sides. ARRL before i found all this out I thought was for amateurs. It don't seem, to be anymore. I am afraid like getting my drivers license (which now is a moot point since it costs so much to drive) it would seem my ham licnse is a moot point to since BPL and WINLINK could take over.

I guess the world is all about where the money is. Greed is the root of all bad things.

Oh well

its over.

Unless we fight it.

Please tell me that getting my license wasn't a waste of time and money...

Winlink has its uses but not in the ham bands.

 

This One Is Far More Important

I find it quite interesting that people get so upset over a non-issue such as Pactor III and other allied digital data modes -- which -- in the overall -- will affect very few for several more decades. The FCC dismissed Mark's petition because the Cmmission is in a deregulatory frame of mind and has been for many years. It also is in a budget pinch any any regulation it imposesw costs it money to enforce. The few the rules, the less of an economic burden the Amateur Service is to the FCC.

What I find most amusing is that all of you have missed the far more important action issued at the same time. That being the denial of another petition by the FCC: That one aimed at creating at least one subband -- in this case on 2 meters -- for the introduction of digital voice technology.

Basically, two Los Angeles area hams petitioned the FCC to open 145.5 to 145.8 MHz as another repeater subband on 2 meters for digital voice only. The two claimed -- quite accurately -- that in crowded urban areas that it is all but impossible to introduce digital voice repeater because analog machines own all the channel pairs. The FCC declined the petition noting that most of 2 meters is already dedicated to relay-type communications and tossed the matter back i the hands of the ham community to work together to figure it out -- without any input or assistance from the FCC. You cam read the actual decision at: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-08-1083A1.pdf

OK. Was this change really needed? It depends on your point of view. If you have invested close to $8000 to put up a digital voice repeater only to find not one channel pair available -- even on a time shared basis - you would llikely agree with its proponents. On the other hand, if you own and / or operate an analog FM repeater - or are just a user, you will rejoice kin that your "investment" has just been "protected" by this FCC decision.

So what does this mean? In simplest terms, the introduction of digital voice -- really D-Star -- in most urban areas will have to wait for either an existing analog repeater owner/operator to convert to digital or for the owner / operator of an analog FM repeater to retire and turn the channel pair back to the local coordination body -- if one exists. Oh -- there wl be sme fly-by-night concepts that hams wll come up with, but in reality the FCC is saying that if it repeats -- be it analog or digital -m it has to do so in a repeater subband.

While this decision may not impact operations in the cornfields of Iowa or he hinterlands of the great South-West, it is gong to mean that on 2 meters - and in some geographic rregions on 70 CM as well -- that its going to be a long, long time before digital voice can get a true foothold. Unless we see a $129 digital voice transceiver come to the market to spark interest - the switchover -- which will eventually happen -- will be agonizingly slow. And the last thing I expect to see at next weeks Dayton Hamvention is a $129 digital audio transceiver for 2 meters or any band for that matter.

I am not saying that digital voice and digital voice relay is dead. Far from it. I stiill preict tha in al aspects of ham radio that digital will replace analog over due time. But its going to be a far longer time period before digital voice supplants analog FM as the mode of choice for day to day, local and web-relayed voice communications. And in reality, this affects a far greater number of spectrum users than does a limited interest mode like HF digital data transfer using Pactor III or any other client. And from the standpoint of news, at it affects numbers, this denial is far more significant than is the one dismissing Mar's requested rules change.

de WA6ITF

 

I've always enjoyed Mark's comments on QRZ and thought his petition was well written. His knowlege in this area surpasses mine 100:1.

The N5RFX petition was, in part, a request for regulation by bandwidth. The FCC has gone on record in their response as unreceptive to regulation by bandwidth.

IMO enforcement of 47CFR97.113(a)(5) is all that is needed.

73

Doug
KA3TGV

 

Really? Have a listen to 20M sometime. At least a half dozen pactor boxes buzzing away continuously, occupying about 3kHz each. This pronouncement will open the floodgates.

I see. So, this is why Mr. Enforcer (Newsline quote) goes about nailing hapless hams who "don't pay their repeater dues" to repeater trolls?

If the FCC's so strapped for funds, why does Mr. Enforcer create his own regulations to threaten amateurs?

 

So why is two meters the only possible area for the incubation of digital voice repeaters?

If you have to buy a new radio to take advantage of the digital voice repeater why not a 220mhz or 440mhz radio? I could understand this if D* repeaters were compatible with everybody's analog 2m radio but it is *NOT*.

This sounds like some extremely "in-the-box" thinking to me -- 2m is what most people use on analog so my new digital voice repeater has to be on 2m.

tim ab0wr

 

Lets see: A dozen stations -- likely half of them outside the jurisdiction of the FCC -- and its going to open the floodgates?

Come on -- get real. Do you know how very few hams have any interest at all in HF digital data? Its just not going to happen -- but you and the rest are free to worry about it. I won't. Ill spend my time on the air and enjoying the hobby and if a buzzer shows up near my QSO, Ill move and keep enjoying the hobby. Life's just to short to complain about nonsense like this.

ITF

 

I am a budding sailor. I was looking into ways to communicate with family while living aboard a boat. I happened onto Winlink 2000. I tried it and it worked pretty well.

Then I notice there is a Winlink Haters group. Kind of like a Nazi Home Owners Associations or the Glenn Baxter K1MAN Hater group. They don't seem to be trying to improve the hobby, but like to whine and complain about things that are different. (CW sucks because I use voice...SSB sucks because I use CW...Digital sucks because...14.313 sucks...people with freckles suck, buck teeth people suck, you suck because you don't wear the right shoes...high school continued). I assume RM-11392 was designed to eliminate winlink 2000.

Ok...having my whining out of the way...

I see the value of communications for a sailor and amateur radio operator 1000 miles off shore being able to send a message to friends and family, or to receive weather fax. If this mode is broadcasting and interfering (like K1MAN and W1AW), I would like to see a more productive way to solve the problem. Maybe propose to add amateur frequencies to the spectrum for this purpose, rather than ban a part of the hobby that is obviously being used and is useful to some.

Looks like another case of fools trying to get the government to help them get their way.

 

I have no idea what you are talking about in relation to "pay their repeater dues" but if you are referring to the FCC backing the legal challenge by repeater owner/operator/licensees who order a given ham off of a given repeater, simply the law is on the side of the repeater owner/operator/licensee and not the 'user.' While the "user" may be free to "use" any frequency he/she wishes, the "repeater owner" is not obligated to repeat that hams signal through the repeating device. If asked to depart and the "user" fails to do so, and insists on being repeated, then it shows malicious intent on the part of the "user" which puts him/her in violation of Part 97 in the area of causing malicious interference.

Over the years I have reported on what has to be dozens of challenges by users who were banned -- with some hiring lawyers and going into civil court. One in your part of the world going all the way with appeals into the federal court system. In every case the matter was either thrown out as having no basis in law --- or was found in favor of the defendant repeater owner. To date -- not one attempt to have a "ban" a ham from operating on a repeater has been overturned in any of our nations courts.

On the other hand, before the FCC got involved there was case law developed in California, and several other states upholding the right of a repeater owner/operator/licensee to ban users from a system. The earliest of these was a 1979 to about 1984 campaign (for lack of a better term) against a Los Angeles-based repeater jamming group calling itself Underground Radio and going by the acronym UGR. It was successfully beaten into legal submission by the late Joseph Merdler, N6AHU, an attorney from Northridge CA. -- but not before one or more of the Underground radio followers burned crosses on Merdler's lawn. That story made national headlines and was the first incident that brought to the FCC's attention the seriousness of the repeater jamming problem.

A decade later another attorney, Sidney Radus, N6OMS, representing a local club whose repeater was being harassed by some unwanted users was very successful in getting state courts to ban the unwanted users from "using the clubs property" in the form of forcing themselves onto the club repeater. That decision lead to numerous appeals -- but in the end Radus and the radio club prevailed. This incident was the one that lead FCC Attorney Thomas Fitz-Gibbon to write his letter stating that a repeater had the right to ban users and also had the right to "private out" and select only those the owner wanted to be users with access to a given system. It was published in its entirety in both 73 and Worldradio.

A similar situation also took place Alabama about 1989. A wayward repeater user was told he could not use a repeater. He retaliated by operating high power simplex on the repeaters input and output. The club took him to state court and won a permanent injunction barring him from any operation on ham bands where the club operated a repeater -- based on theft of club property. He appealed -- both in civil and federal court -- the case lasted well into the early 1990's -- and he lost each appeal. Cannot recall his name but I suspect some of the old timers of FM there would be able to come up with his name and call.

Note that all the above pre-dates the entry of Riley Hollingsworth to the FCC enforcemrent scene. So yes, case law does exist and every bit of it sides with the repeater owner operator / licensee.

And no. "Mr. Enforcer" is not creating his own rules. They exist based on long established case law -- most developed b efore he came to the position he now holds. And in case you have not noticed, so far the score has been: Repeater Owners - 100% - user/challengers 0% in both state and federal courts.

ITF

 

If there is a station using it -- or any other mode -- as a weapon of interference, then you file a complaint with the FCC's enforcement folks and ask that they handle it. Let them develop the needed case law. But do not expect action in once in a while random interference. It must be provable as having malicious intention before the agency will act.

ITF

 

New digital techniques were not needed to invent the world's largest spectrum hog, Spectrum Maximus, otherwise known as the Rare DX Split Pileup.

Up! Up!

Then, of course, there's the Boatload O' Spectrum Chomping Device commonly sold under its generic name: DX Contest

QRZ?

73

 

Part 97 conveys no prior right to any frequency or frequency pair, other than an acknowledgement of coordinated repeaters prevailing over uncoordinated ones on the same pair within reasonably the same territory.

While Part 97 provides the right of a repeater owner or control operator to limit access to a given repeater or its bells and whistles, it does not convey that anyone using the repeater is worthy of a threat of fine or other sanction if simply asked not to.......verbally or in writing.

Most of the "case law" you cite should have been thrown out since state courts have no authority to enforce the Communications Act or any promulgated regulations unless specifically given permission.

Malicious interference does not occur simply because someone transmits if no one else is. That's ridiculous, Bill, and you know it. Now, granted, if someone is broadcasting, keying up without identification with a dead carrier, it could be so construed.

The reason I mention this is that even if all of your "cites" are correct, the FCC has had what, a decade or more, to codify "unauthorized repeater use" as a violation of Part 97. It has not. Yet, Riley Hollingsworth, "the Enforcer," in Newsline's terms, issues threats of fines and suspensions if a repeater clique bans someone from operation on their machine by edict.

If, the accused person did cause malicious interference, NONE, I repeat, NONE of his last several such letters contained any description of the accused having caused malicious interference to any station. Nor, any particular cited section of Part 97 supposedly breached.

So, if "case law" can govern us, then just where is the average Joe supposed to find those "invented" rules and penalties? Learn from someone's vivid imagination? Or, pay a ham attorney 'expert' for a copy of the "Hidden Rules of Amateur Radio" before he or she gets on the air? Ah, but I forgot one of your state's finest and maybe that's where you came up with ther rationale: California's "Basic Speed Law." (If the cop thinks you were going too fast for the road conditions, you're guilty).

Perhaps its the Libertarian in me, but our country is supposed to be based upon the rule of law. Written law, not something imagined, moment by moment, to fit an ever changing universe. Opinions and case law are based upon interpretations of what is written. And, if a rule or law is changed as a result of an interpretation, it must be changed in writing to be enforceable.
Personally, I'm sick and tired of reading Riley's version of the Basic Speed Law every other week or so in the ARRL Letter.

Your examples, and especially the one in Alabama, extoll the reasons why people who should prevail most often lose: It all boils down to the sad reality of how much one is willing and able to spend in order to prevail. And, that includes invitations to come to Washington and appear before an Administrative Law Judge to appeal an Enforcer decision.

73.

 

The post a few back is a perfect example. Sailors and RVers that are too cheap to buy the commercial SailMail service can simply get a ham license and have freebie email service. Why pay when you can bypass the common carrier? (Hint: Now that IS a violation of Part 97, Bill)

 

Bonnie,

You are trying to compare apples with oranges and theres really no basis for such a comparison.

DX'ing and contesting are -- on HF -- the very backbone of existance off ham radio. While they may be annoying to some, they are really the "glue" that holds a majority in the hobby. Its been that way from the earliest days and always will be. Its the allure of that feeling one gets when he/she triumphs over the pack to snag a truly rare spot or that thrill of finding that hours spent with mic and key have brought a championship nod from the rest of those who participated in a contest.

In another genre, traffic handling by voice and/or Morse is an accepted form of activity by the masses, because they can hear it with nothing more than their existing radio gear and decide whether or not they cant to become a part of this activity.

The realm of digital messaging is very different. To 99.9% of the ham community its neither understood nor yet accepted.

Many -- likely most -- consider a digital messaging station -- be it manned or automated -- to be nothing more than an "annoying noise." They have no interest in it now and likely few ever will. At least until the day that digital messaging totally supplants the analog voice and Morse systems in use for decades. And, very candidly, I do not see this kind of a change happening very soon. Mainly because the average ham has traditionally been opposed to change -- even if that change proves early on to be a better alternative to whats currently in vogue. The average ham also wants to purchase a relatively inexpensive plug and play "box" with no frills that he or she can hook directly to an antenna. Not a radio plus an external "this and that."

Lets go back in fairly recent history to when double-sideband, full carrier AM phone ruled the HF bands and an upstart mode called Single Sideband was desparately trying to establish itself. The users of SSD were called such nmes as "Donald Duck Hams" and "Side-Quackers." They were ostricized by the rest of the ham community of the day because they dared to be different and try something new. "Trying" meant buying or building add-ons for both ones receiver and transmitter to use the mode and folks were just reluctant to pry the inside of their Johnson Ranger or Globe Scout 680A to add an external SSB generator ot install a Product Detector in their Hallicrafters SX-99 or National NC-98. It took the introduction of the relatively low cost Swan 120 transceiver -- a monobander for about $300 (compared to almost $2000 for a Collins transceiver) to get enough people to try SSB and realize that it was far superior to AM to get the attention of mainstream ham radio. and its going to take the same type of radio -- affordable by all -- for digital messaging to come of age in the 21st century.

Keep in mind that there are currently some 650,000 hams in the USA of which its estimated half are inactive. Even so, 325,000 is still a viable number, but over 50% of all hams are Technician class with no apparant aspiration to operate HF in any form. Their "shack on a belt clip" is their comitment to the service and its doubtful it will go beyond that. So, in reality we are talking about some 112,000 hams in the USA who are active on HF of which maybe 1/2 to 1 percent have any interest at all in digital communications and only a tiny percentage of that in automated, unattended digital messaging. A true minority within a minority. Also, one with relatively no understanging of or acceptance by the rest of the hams who are active on the HF bands.

You want to see this change? Get a manufacturer to bring out a reasonably priced radio that not only operates CW and SSB, but also all of the digital modes and does not require any external add-ons.

History has proven that this is the one sure way for a mode to successfully be established. Again my analogy to SSB: It was Collins that developed it. It was Central Electronics that first made it available to hams, but it was Swan Electronics packaging and price point that made it mainstream. And thats the reality of both ham radio and of life itself.

de WA6ITF

 

Again, a reality check. How many of these "sailors" and "RV'ers" are there that even care to have e-mail let alone have invested in it? I had breakfast todayt at a place right across from a large RV park. On the sign it read: "Free Internet Hookup." More and more RV parks are going this route which totally negates the need of RV'ers to have ham radio based digital messaging.

As to sailors? How many are there? In relation to all of ham radio, how many hams are rich enough to own a vessel large enough to ply the openseas to where the sailor needs digital messaging?

Well, Ill save you a lot of research. Two of my closest friends are both hams and full time recreational sailors. One just pent the last 5 months of winter in the Caribbean. I once asked him this question to which his response was not very many because few folks can afford to buy the type of vessel that is needed to do more than off-shore cruising (which in many cases is within range of coastal Wi-Fi). Those with boats like his that can and have done around the world cruises do carry it but few operate it on the ham bands because mesaging by ham radio is just plain unreliable. Yes there are some, but the number i relatively small. Especially with common carrier rates falling faster than the price of gas is rising!

As to it being a violation of law? Only if the ham himself or herself is profiting from it. 97:113 (a)(2) -- sometimes called the "pizza pie rule" spells it out: (2) "Communications for hire or for material compensation, direct or indirect, paid or promised, except as otherwise provided in these rules;"

Also applicable is 97:113(a)(5): (5) if the ham is in port or within US terrtitorial waters on a US flagged vessel: "Communications, on a regular basis, which could reasonably be furnished alternatively through other radio services."

But if Joe Ham is out in the middle of the Pacific he cant be touched. The shore based stations can getr cited, but not Joe Ham at sea.

fr
WA6ITF

Otherwise,

 

True on the first two counts, but not the last. Heath had a major role in the proliferation of reasonably priced SSB transceivers. More so than SWAN.

I was one of those who delved into SSB via the addition of a Heath SB-10 SSB adaptor to my Viking Two. (Yes, I did adjust the bias on the 6146s).

The SB-10 was an add on designed for the DX-100, but many were sold to and built by guys like me who wanted to try it out.

Then, there were the single band SSB transceivers. A bigger hit than Swan's offerings.

Lets do compare digital voice to SSB. Yes, narrower bandwidth. Greater range? Probably less. D*, for example, is "all or none" just like a cell phone. You either hear it or its not there. I prefer to have some inclinking that a signal is getting weaker instead of just "zap", gone.

SSB really had several advantages over AM. Significantly less spectrum, two or more times the effective range, and more efficient, per Watt of power consumed. These can't be said of anything yet that is digital voice, to my knowledge.

So, it was easy to sell to those who didn't mind a little less fidelity.

73.