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Title: Much Harder Done Than Said or Speaking from Experience Post by: k4kyv on May 14, 2005, 01:41:03 PM In WorldRadio (the west coast ham radio rag published on newsprint), John B. Johnston, W3BE, retired chief of the Rulemaking Division of the Private Radio Bureau of the FCC that used to be in charge of ham radio rulemaking matters, publishes a monthly column on RULES & REGS. The column is basically Q-A format, with Johnston sometimes inserting his own comments as a "W3BE-O-GRAM."
You may recall that Mr. Johnston seemed to pursue a consistently anti-AM policy throughout the 20+ years he was involved with FCC rulemaking. He first gained notoriety within the AM community when he advocated eliminating AM, in the guise of "deregulation," under the mid-1970's bandwidth proposal in Docket 20777 (somewhat similar to the proposal that ARRL is currently discussing). Later, he was a strong defender of the 1990 AM power reduction, and typcially replied to objections from the amateur community by putting a spin on his response in such a manner that totally evaded whatever issue was brought up. The June 2005 issue of WorldRadio just came out, and most of the Q-A's are about Field Day and who can and cannot operate a given licensee's station, but this one is interesting: Quote Q: How can we rid our HF bands of AM? A. That would require an amendment to Section 97.3(c)(5), at least. W3BE-O-GRAM: That would be much harder done than said. Title: Much Harder Done Than Said or Speaking from Experience Post by: Carl WA1KPD on May 14, 2005, 05:10:09 PM I saw that and was going to respond with a letter to the editor. i do not appreciate the inference in his statement. Why not advocate the elimination of SSB? I mean it just sounds horrible
Title: Much Harder Done Than Said or Speaking from Experience Post by: k4kyv on May 15, 2005, 12:39:39 PM Quote I saw that and was going to respond with a letter to the editor. I do not appreciate the inference in his statement. Unfortunately, WorldRadio does not regularly publish letters to the editor. When I read it I wondered if this could be an effort to rekindle the old get-rid-of-AM issue. There is no justification to eliminate AM, SSB or any other mode. The bogus "interference" and "bandwidth" issues could best be addressed by redrawing the boundaries of subbands, or by eliminating subbands altogether as virtually all the rest of the world has done. Often, when 75 is jam-packed with several layers of signals, and slopbucketeers are pissing and moaning about those "wide" AM signals and carriers, you can tune lower in frequency and find scores of kHz of unused amateur spectrum lying idle below 3750. |