ARRL Readies Bandwidth Recommendations

Ken,

Respectfully, I think you miss the point. The majority of radio amateurs want to communicate by voice, not by keyboard. And, they want to communicate in real time, not by unattended mailboxes, leaving messages for later reading.

Just as the cell phone now has both real-time communications and text-messaging (i.e. store-and-forward), it is probably appropriate for ham radio to continue to offer the same for private use, but only in proportion to the desires of the ham radio population.

Do you remember that scene in Star Trek where Scotty picked up the microphone of a Mac computer and tried to give it voice commands! This should tell you where people exect the future to go.

The discussion is NOT about radio email or not - it is only about the proportion of our small spectrum slice to be allocated to unattended store-and-forward "services" compared to real time communication between hams.

What the FCC is saying is that the regulations should not inhibit new technologies. This means digital voice as well as digital data transfer. There is no question that the world is going digital, but this does not mean the real-time communications between people is not going to continue to be the major interest for most hams. Ragchewing (in real-time), contesting, DXing, award-chasing, etc., will always be the major interest, whether it is digital or analog. Just look at the small percentage of SSTV or RDFT interest there is. Even MFSK16 pictures, which were very popular for a while (until the regulations shut it off), only amounted for a tiny percentage of digital ham activity. I came up with a way to send color portraits by PSK63, during a QSO, so the other operator could see what you looked like, and even that attracted a very small amount of interest. Certainly, as a person with technical interests, I would love to be able to send a schematic diagram to better explain what I am doing, but that is only a few times, and for that I can use a high-bandwidth image data mode to do that, so I do not take up valuable spectrum others need for just text, or voice in the over-crowded phone bands.

Your professed support for the ARRL plan, without reservations, could come back to bite you in the future. The direction may be right, but the ARRL implementation provides inadequate protection for legacy modes that MOST hams still want to use for real-time communications, as they are no match for an email robot's power or persistence, or its ability to dominate a frequency and run anyone else off that was on it first, as those of us who encounter Pactor mailboxes know so well.

You would do better by suggesting ways that the ARRL petition could be more fair to ALL interests, and not biased towards a small special interest group, instead of blindly supporting it in the whole, just because the direction in which it is going is the right one.

 

I have made unknown?

Some might say so!



incombant?

Were you thinking combatant?



Up a way toooooooo late?



Jim
WA0LYK

 

Jim,

I have trouble spelling that particular word and yes I probably was up a bit too late. I get up at 5am to get to work.

Ken

 

Skip,

I know you have a real problem with the general blue print proposal that the committee you were part of prepared and submitted as part of its responsibility to the League. Are you still working within to get the necessary changes? I'm still writing Tom Frenaye when I think I have some good ideas about what needs to be done to make this plan more acceptable. Have you done so as well within your division?

There is a plan on the table. There has been some great contributions made on here by a number the participants. The problem is that these good ideas are mostly just sitting here on the forum and are not being submitted by interested League members as they should be. We will not get any change without participation through appropriate channels. For those outside the League, you will have to either submit your own petititions or reserve you comments for the FCC RM process that will have to follow, but in the end the changes that seem to be coming will take several years to be accomplished. There is plenty of time to influence the final product including forcing the issue to be dropped entirely during the period to follow.

Ken

 

I am coming up with new understandings almost daily and forwarding them to my Director. So far, I have had no response.

Nope, but keep trying. Sooner or later, I hope someone will get the idea that there is more than just the Winlink side to this story. Rather than trying to kill the ARRL petition, it would be much better if it reflected all the good new ideas from everyone and was fair to everyone, and not just to Winlink. That is all anyone wants.

It may be wrong to assume that people are not submitting ideas or comment. It may be right to assume the ARRL is not listening (yet!).

 

Skip,

We must hold their feet to the fire either way. I know the WL2k proponents have with the call they put out on their web-site. It is important for us to do the same.

I recently sent Tom Frenaye a significant message concerning how see the community responding to the proposal and suggesting that more accountability was needed from the BoD, whether I get a response to same or not, I have made my comments and will continue. (BTW, Tom was on R&R for several weeks and not available. I did hear from Dave Sumner on a couple of occassions relative to my concerns.)

Ken

 

Skip,

Your comment regarding the power and persistance of the ARQ protocols is correct. They are much more robust than the FEC conversational modes, and do supply 100 percent accuracy under severe adverse propagation conditions. Does this make them evil? Does having a desire to send a binary transfer be it data, voice or image today either in real-time or not, mean that is should be formally separated by law from what may not be in existence tomorrow? That is what we have today and it does not seem to be working. Thus all the complaints.

Should hard coded regulations be put in place for todays protocol methodologies so that they will create vacuum spaces in the spectrum in the future?

In the opinion of many, the band plan is not about the small number auto-response operations. it is about making those choices that concern Amateur radio without the need for formal regulation that remains static for years after it serves its usefullness.

As I have stated on this thread several times, there are those pushing for 20 KHz bandwidth limitations and higher. I personally think that a much lower (3 to 4 KHz) limitation should be placed on bandwidth simply because with a popular protocol with a bandwith of 6 to 9 KHz (now legal) means only a few can operate at any one time. Sort of like our cramped 5 to 10 KHz space is now with the auto-answer 2.1 Khz signals. But, regardless of my own opinion, the FCC has already stated they are not limiting bandwidth to the proposed 3 KHz limit.

The ARRL HSMM committee Just put out their band plan recommendations for a 20 KHz bandwidth limitation from 80-10 Meters, period!

Here is a piece of that recommendation:

Band Plan Recommendation, High Speed Multimedia Networks Working Group Technology Task Force, January 18, 2005.


The ARRL High Speed Multimedia Working Group is extremely concerned regarding the nature many of the current proposals for band plans. We think that most such proposals, as progressive as they may appear to be at this time, will ultimately, in the future, severely restrict the growth and development of Amateur Radio into the digital age of radio communications of the 21st Century.

Any change in FCC regulations will freeze band plans in stone for the Next 20 years. To allow for future development, the HSMM working group recommends that FCC regulations should be simplified with only a single
maximum allowed emission bandwidth for each amateur band:

160m: 10 kHz
80m-10m: 20 kHz
6m-2m: 200 kHz
125cm+: within band

The ARRL can then issue band plans that create segments with lower emission bandwidths and these can change over time as different operating modes become popular. On the 160 through 10 meter bands, one band plan must cover the U.S. to prevent interference. Above 30 MHz, the band plans may be regional.

You can read about it on http://www.arrl.org/announce/reports-2005/january/23a-HSMM.doc. and other such recommendations on http://www.arrl.org/announce/reports-2005/january/


Unattended space, How wide to allow bandwidth, where should this or that protocol be, Where should the protocols that do not yet exist be, Where to operate DX contests without regard to others, and many, many more considerations must be worked out. However, asking the FCC to regulate such matters is not in keeping with the signals they are presently giving, or what the ARRL is proposing.

This does not mean that the ARRL will necessarily follow the advice of the now almost three-year old ad-hoc HF digital committee, (filtered through the Voluntary Resources committee) that you have fixated on, or that they will follow the most recent advice of the HSMM Working Group Taskforce. What it means is they first must contend with the ability to get out from under the static nature of the existing regulatory structure. Smart move!

So, the first issue is who is going to deal with these matters, and how. Lastly, what the majority of amateurs do today, has little to do with what the majority of Amateurs will do tomorrow, and thereafter.

AM (PSK? Pactor? Spark?) forever!


Steve, k4cjx

 

There are many flaws in the HSMM way of thinking, IMHO. That bunch is just too liberal with spectrum. Can you see 20 kHz signals on 12 and 17 meters now? There won't be very many of them!

First, emission bandwidth must be defined. I like the emission designator bandwidth numbers personally. Second, The 3 kHz limit (below 10m) may be a bit restrictive, depending on which definition of emission bandwidth is used.

On 160m, 10 kHz seems excessive, considering the very nature of that band to be noisy. And 20 kHz on 20m? Naw, no way. The widest thing on that band should be no wider than the AM guys are now, and possibly not that wide. The AM & DSB stuff can be given a waiver, as is suggested in the current ARRL draft.

I know propagation is not ideal on 10m, but this is a band that has lots of spare room. All of our other bands are much smaller in size.

Something more realistic is in order ... and everything below 28 MHz (excluding waivers for AM & DSB) should be set at a practical minimum. Experimenters will just have to get on 10 meters to play with the super wide stuff. The activity would be of additional benefit as well, as it may chase some of the illegals off of 10 meters.

Those are my initial thoughts. I would be most interested in other opinions!

73,
Luke

 

Luke,

Several things come to mind. There will be other means to limit the type of protocol used. I doubt if symbol rate will survive as a limiting factor, but something will take its place. In addition, the duration of such a wideband signal would be instant. After all, the current average message on WL2K, including graphics and text, is 2.2 seconds for a 2.1 KHz protocol. What would it be for a 20 KHz transmission or "burst"? I dunno, but it won't be coming from my station!

What worries me is that should such a wideband protocol become extremely popular, there would have to be very carefully deployed methods of signal detection at least.

But, when the ruling is made, it will last a long, long time and a lot can happen in such a time span if we are given the opportunity.

However, you will notice that those who have the personal vendetta going against the 24 auto-response Winlink 2000 stations, are currently silent about a possible 20 KHz signal being used. I do know one thing, there won't be anyone on the receiving end of those type signals and even if there were, it wouldn't matter considering their duration.

Here is the specific segmentation recommended by the HSMM Working group:

"We understand that amateurs using the existing HF CW and phone bands want protection, and if the ARRL must reflect that we recommend 200 Hz
statutory limits at the lower for CW and low-speed data, and 6 kHz statutory limits at the upper end of each band to allow existing SSB, ISB and DSB AM operation plus any other modes that fall within the bandwidth limitations. At a minimum, 20 kHz wide emissions should be allowed in the following segments:

3.58 - 3.725 MHz
7.035 - 7.125 MHz
14.065 - 14.15 MHz
21.08 - 21.2 MHz
29 - 29.7 MHz"



Steve, k4cjx

 

Steve,

This is troubling. You are indicating that you only take 2.2 seconds to pass wideband traffic, but you state elsewhere that the average connection time is 2 minutes. It seems that you have a severe overhead problem. Over 200 seconds worth of overhead?

Ken

 

Oops, obvious correction: 2.2 minutes....

Sorry,


Steve, k4cjx