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Final Band Plan Accepted today by the ARRL

Discussion in 'Amateur Radio News' started by WW5F, Jul 24, 2020.

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  1. K0UO

    K0UO Platinum Subscriber Platinum Subscriber QRZ Page

    So far there's been five pages in this thread and no one is really supporting the ARRL proposal 100%.

    On the new ARRL forums pages, there were hundreds, if not thousands of similar comments against adopting the major changes for Winlink and automatic stations. Just by voting for this new band plan, it absolutely proves that the Board doesn't listen to membership at all.

    This is been hashed over for 15 years and these services are now outdated at this point anyway. Spectrum hogging automatic equipment is not needed in the amateur bands. I see now why so many people are not joining the League or have stopped leg or have stopped their membership.

    At this point the board seems totally unresponsive to the Amateur service.

    I don't disagree with some of the proposal, but throwing the Winlink crap in there is crazy. Technicians get a chance to operate voice on the HF lower frequencies and everybody else gets screwed by losing precious band space/ emissions and being interfered with by these Spectrum robbing services.
    Free email is not an enumerated purpose of amateur radio in Part 97.1, and its proliferation now threatens access to the entire DATA segments of the HF spectrum for legitimate narrowband use.


    I hope Technicians will support the battle to keep Winlink and automatic stations off the amateur bands, in all fairness the League should have addressed this in two different proposals to the FCC, which they still could.

    At least on QRZ we can agree to disagree!
     
    Last edited: Jul 27, 2020
    WK0DX, NQ1B and ND6M like this.
  2. K0IDT

    K0IDT Ham Member QRZ Page

    The arrl is hoping all those Techs, primarily licensed for emcomm purposes, will join the club and embrace the new digital (Winlink) privileges in appreciation for the freebies. It's a membership drive plain and simple and doomed to
    failure like all the other initiatives that promised a flood of new innovation if implemented.

    Former club member.......
     
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  3. NC4JB

    NC4JB Ham Member QRZ Page

    Reason #1,593 the ARRL will never get my money or my support.
     
  4. WW5F

    WW5F Ham Member QRZ Page

    Just trying to think like a board member and what might be in the long term plans... but maybe...

    I don't agree with this new band plan as it looks like it's trying to get rid of an "outdated mode" (CW). But maybe they're thinking when the WB/ACDS's start to overwhelm the existing ham bands, that might be the ammunition needed to effectively petition for other (more) parts of HF.

    Sometimes, I start at 30 Khz on my receiver and spin the knob up to 57 Mhz or 63 Mhz (what ever the top of the receiver is in my IC-7410) and I see/hear a lot of dead air. I know it's all allocated for something or another, but if the ham community can show they've run out of frequencies and need more... well, I'm just thinking what the board might be thinking but not saying at this time...

    They might be trying to reclaim the glory of the beginning of the ARRL when the QST's listed active relay stations across the U.S. (before we were assigned the "W" and "N" and "K" world-wide prefixes) in their QST issues and how fast a message could be relayed from coast to coast.

    They could possibly start listing 24/7 gateways and relays of the ACDS's once again in QST across the US and once again claim how fast they can get an email with attachments across the US (if, God forbid, something catastrophic happens to the Internet).

    I don't know. Probably not. Just trying to figure out the motivation(s). There's always some sort of motivation, obvious or not.
     
  5. KE0GXN

    KE0GXN XML Subscriber QRZ Page

    New members and....
    915F92B5-AC11-4BF1-898C-2EE8A77250B2.gif
     
    WK0DX, K8PG, N1OOQ and 2 others like this.
  6. K0IDT

    K0IDT Ham Member QRZ Page

    There's a lot wrong with a total internet down ham email replacement idea.
    1. What if the email is going to a non-ham?
    2. How does a non-ham get a message into the system?
    3. How is a non-ham to know where the nearest ham is that can put a message into the system? Also see #1 & #2.
    4. The long haul amateur 'pipe' isn't big enough to handle the potential volume of email that would need to be sent.
    5. If the internet goes away we could always use antiquated methods like cw or phone. Subject to the same problems 1-4 above and propagation.
    5. Carrier pigeons might be more effective for direct person to person communications.

    arrl needs to get into at least the latter half of the 20th century and figure out that the second 'R' is no longer valid reason to exist, useful maybe but not so much in the 21st century.
    Someone else has already said it, "less ham internet and more ham radio.

    I can't really say much here that wouldn't be pure speculation and get me in a heap of legal trouble but it looks like a lot of $$$ is involved and effective lobbying by a small but influential group is causing a lot of the current grief.
    Check the arrl committee reports, current and past, and come to your own conclusions. I will say when an arrl director gets everything he/she knows about a system, from the operators of the system, without further research, there may be a problem. Especially when rank and file hams are complaining loud and long about problems said system causes, with ample proof provided to back up the complaints. Start here it may not be obvious if you haven't been paying attention to League shenanigans up to this point but it's in there. Also watch Directors actions and associations for hints, can't be more specific than that, sorry.
     
    K0UO likes this.
  7. K0IDT

    K0IDT Ham Member QRZ Page

    Yup, and you would be shocked if you knew the size of the pot involved.
     
    N3FAA, K8PG, K0UO and 1 other person like this.
  8. K0UO

    K0UO Platinum Subscriber Platinum Subscriber QRZ Page

    THE WOUFF-HONG -
    I think the time has come to Show the ARRL Board what the "Old Man" used to do to bad Hams, that did inappropriate things to Ham Radio!


    20200727_195158.jpg 20200727_195158.jpg
     
  9. K6CLS

    K6CLS Ham Member QRZ Page

    Wait a minute... Band plan is just a suggestion.

    Don't like it, don't use it.
     
  10. WA3VJB

    WA3VJB Platinum Subscriber Platinum Subscriber QRZ Page

    The League's Board of Directors has a long history of pursuing internal agendas, some of which move ahead despite the clearly stated opposition of the ARRL's subscribers, who are the Board's constituents, at least in theory. At a minimum, the Board's practice is to ONLY seek input from those paid subscribers. The rest of us out here keep watch and react where needed when a misguided proposal could harm the greater body of licensees.

    The Winlink controversy dates back more than 15 years, actually, and has remained part of closed-door politics at the Board of Directors as they struggle to find ways to maintain stature in regulatory dealings with the FCC. But, the record shows they have continued to lose ground with the agency and among licensees, with boneheaded lawsuits (internet over power lines), unwarranted Petitions (segregation by bandwidth), and intransigent behavior against seeking popular support FIRST, and abandoning ideas that don't find it.

    Automated store-and-forward services have never been compatible with communications by ear, since they violate Part 97 rules against deliberate interference in requiring stations to listen before transmitting. That's before one even gets to the question of content sent over these messaging channels.

    It'll be a familiar fight if this "final" plan ever reaches the Public Comment record at the FCC. Still relevant: Many of the Comments already filed from failed previous attempts on topic.
     
    WK0DX, K8PG, K0IDT and 1 other person like this.
  11. K0IDT

    K0IDT Ham Member QRZ Page

    We established that early on in the thread. It won't be a problem unless the arrl submits it to the FCC, which they probably will since listening and comprehension isn't in their skill set.
     
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  12. AC0GT

    AC0GT Ham Member QRZ Page

    Why would anyone with a Technician license care? It appears that this is a problem that exists solely on HF. Even if the FCC agreed to grant more privileges for Technician license holders on HF there is still the matter of these people bothering to tune that low. If they wanted to get on HF then they'd have upgraded. This gets to the next point.

    Separating this into two proposals would defeat the point, at least as I'm understanding it. The ARRL wants to encourage those with a Technician license to operate on HF. As it is now this is still something requiring significant investment in time and money to even get started. Unlike in the 1950s when most of America was rural and had space for HF antennas in their backyard the young Amateur isn't likely to have the room for a large antenna, or the room to maintain RF safety space with high power. This means to attract newcomers is to allow for room to experiment with low power modes. As that is interpreted today this means digital modes. Because of how some of the newer digital modes work the line between manual and automatic operation starts to blur. If automatic control is banned then just how much automation is allowed before something would be in violation of the rules?

    I can hear it now... let hem eat cake! I mean, let them learn CW! Well, that's been tried for nearly 70 years now and that's not working all that well. Shall we keep doing what's not working for another 70 years while Amateur radio continues to become even more anachronistic?

    This is far from a great proposal from the ARRL. I will say it's better than most ideas, and better than doing nothing. What would be a far better idea is to stop trying to fix the Technician license. The only way to fix this broken licensing we have is to grandfather Technician and General to make room for two new license classes to replace them.

    I have some ideas for the ARRL to attract new members. One place to start is to change the name of your magazine. QST is meaningless to anyone outside of Amateur radio, and quite possibly meaningless to quite a few people inside Amateur radio. Call the magazine something like The Modern Amateur, or Amateur Radio Today, or just The ARRL Monthly. If QST is seen on a magazine rack in a bookstore or something then it's not going to get anyone's attention but those already a member.

    Flipping through a few recent QST issues and I'm seeing a lot of looking back and not a lot of looking forward. I'm sure that this is comforting to the large numbers of members that have more to look back upon than to look forward to but that's not going to attract many youthful members. New equipment reviews are fine. As are articles on antenna projects. I'm not even opposed to the reprinting of "throwback" articles since it's important to know where we came from. What I'd like to see is more about why one became licensed in the first place, and reasons to stay licensed. If you want people to spend money on the things advertised in the pages of the magazine, and for membership dues, then there needs to be a reminder on why there is any value in this gear and the membership.

    The ARRL leadership does appear to understand that the future of Amateur radio lies in more digital and automated communications. Where they fail is in thinking we can just keep bolting on patches to a license structure that was a bad idea 70 years ago and everything will be fine. It's not fine.
     
  13. KI4POT

    KI4POT Premium Subscriber QRZ Page

    Yup. I scored better on my General exam than tech (missed 2 on Tech, score 100% on General). Though that was probably due to having a couple years operating and experimenting as a Tech. Having practical experience to reinforce the book learning definitely helped.

    Chris
     
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  14. NK8I

    NK8I Ham Member QRZ Page

    What does "working well" look like?

    A lot of newer, younger hams I call the Reddit Set are learning CW. I'm working surprisingly higher numbers of college, even high school cw ops. SKCC is growing. CW Ops classes have 6 months or more waiting lists. Look at the numbers of views NEW CW videos on you tube have.

    My wish is that digital be given its own segments and out of the cw segments since apparently a lot of digital ops don't know how, or bother to listen if the frequency is in use, and QRM all over the place.
     
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  15. WW5F

    WW5F Ham Member QRZ Page

    @NK8I

    Yes, I see the numbers in SKCC, NAQCC, FPQRP, etc continuing to rise also. My wish is to mark some parts of each band for CW *only* also. This would send a clear message that CW is still a relevant part of amateur radio. It used to be you *had* to learn morse code to get on the air. Now it's only those who *want* to learn morse code. I wonder what percentage of ham radio operators are morse code operators today. I wonder what the trend in those numbers are.

    [sarcasm] If the ARRL doesn't act now, CW may experience a renaissance![/sarcasm]

    ...or is that sarcasm? o_O I'm really not sure.

    Saying CW is authorized anywhere in the band says, "Yes, CW is still relevant." If you're gullible, you go on about your happy life thinking things will not change. But that's like saying "horses and buggies" are still relevant because "horses and buggies are still allowed on the roads." Horse and buggy owners still feel relevant, but they don't use them on an interstate highways because of practical reasons. New CW ops won't be using 7.100 - 7.125 any more because of practical reasons.

    I don't know. What ever happens, happens. Then I'll adjust again.
     

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