For What it's Worth …
A CQ Online Commentary

By Rich Moseson, W2VU, Editor

© 2009 CQ Communications, Inc., All Rights Reserved
 
 

Archaic?

You can learn a lot from your kids…

The other day, I was driving with my son, Dan (KC2OOM), and talking to someone on a local repeater (if you read my November editorial, yes, I found someone to talk to). This gentleman was basically grousing about the current state of ham radio, and came to the conclusion that "with all the new technology around today, I hate to admit it, but ham radio is archaic."

I unwittingly took the bait and started talking about how other so-called "archaic" ways of doing things -- such as fishing, sailing and horseback riding -- are flourishing. But when I paused to take a breath, Dan interjected, "Software defined radio is archaic?" And I realized he was absolutely right, and that I'd fallen into the trap of believing our own negative propaganda, even if I was defending our continuing relevance in the face of such adversity.

I'm not the only one. Recently, there was a generally positive story about Morse code and ham radio in the Wall Street Journal, but the underlying message was that Morse code is archaic, is dying out and is only being preserved by a shrinking group of nostalgic hams. The truth, however, is quite different. Morse code is still the mode of communications that will get through when nothing else will, the only "digital" mode that can be produced and decoded without the need for a terminal unit or computer. In addition, it is not dying out, at least not among hams. In fact, since the code test requirement was dropped this past February, all indications are that code activity on the bands has increased significantly. Plus, our CW contests continue to show increased participation, with record numbers of logs being submitted year after year. We needn't try to justify CW's continuing relevance in the face of being archaic, because it isn't.

The same applies to ham radio in general. Software-defined radio is not archaic. Satellites are not archaic. WinDRM is not archaic. (What's WinDRM? It's the ham radio version of Digital Radio Mondiale, the international standard for digital shortwave broadcasting. See December CQ's Digital column for an introduction.) Digital voice in general is not archaic, and hams are finding ways to adapt commercial DV standards to the unique needs of communicating on the amateur bands. Meteor scatter and moonbounce are not archaic, nor is the research being conducted by hams on low-frequency allocations (experimental here in the U.S., open to all in some other countries).

If ham radio is archaic, why is a ham station on board the International Space Station and why are virtually all current space travelers strongly urged to get ham licenses as part of their training? Yes, the ham station's primary role is to further NASA's educational mission through crew contacts with schools around the world, but it also serves as a crucial backup communications system, with a network of operators around the world able to receive and relay messages, who can be called into service on a moment's notice (as they were earlier this year during a docking procedure that damaged a station antenna).

Even our traditional modes of HF SSB and VHF/UHF FM and repeaters are not archaic -- they work when all the supposedly more-advanced systems fail, and by that definition alone, they are not archaic. The use of Echolink and IRLP to route local repeater communications from stricken areas to the National Hurricane Center has helped give forecasters there a better picture of conditions on the ground and improved their ability to put out accurate and timely warnings. This system provides an additional message path in case internet connections in an area manage to stay up but HF stations are temporarily off the air. Our ability to get messages through when nothing else is working certainly is not archaic.

One of the problems we do have is that not enough of our people are getting themselves involved in cutting edge technology and equipment. But popular perceptions aside, this is nothing new. The introduction of CW was met with great resistance for many years by the "spark forever" crowd; AM phone had an uphill battle against the code purists; SSB phone was introduced to ham radio in the 1950s, but I still remember hearing plenty of AM signals and squawks about "silly sideband" and "Donald Duck" when I came into the hobby in the early 1970s. Even today, RTTY purists won't allow other digital keyboard modes such as PSK-31 "count" in contests, and it will be a long time before digital voice is commonly used on the ham bands. Overall, we tend to be a very conservative group (and I'm not talking politics here), and we don't adapt to changes quickly or easily. On the other hand, the technology is out there for those who want to pursue it.

A few people who don't think ham radio is archaic:

Admiral Edmund P. Giambastiani, Jr. (Ret.), N4OC, former Vice Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, interviewed in the October 2007 issue of CQ: "I think that what's important is that amateur radio in today's world can provide some real fundamentals for kids in terms of science and technology that they can't get from their computers and cell phones … This country has always had innovators, experimenters. One of the great things about amateur radio is that it encourages that. That's what drew me to it."

Dr. Tony Tether, K2TGE, Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), interviewed in the November 2007 issue of CQ: "(Ham radio is) a life-changing experience. You will learn more than you would naturally learn about a whole lot of things, and on top of that, you'll have a tremendous amount of fun."

Gordon England, ex-W3AWO, Deputy Secretary of Defense, interviewed in the December 2007 issue of CQ: "I believe the greatest threat to our country is not being competitive in science and technology. We need to expose young people to things like amateur radio to get them interested."

Vice Admiral Scott Redd (Ret.), K0DQ, Director, National Counterterrorism Center, interviewed for the January 2008 issue of CQ: I think there are things that you gain by being in amateur radio that you don't get other places. First and foremost, the RF spectrum is … something which just permeates everything we do, … so I think familiarity with that is one of the things that you get in ham radio which you don't get elsewhere. And number two is that sense of experimentation… Obviously, it's no secret, it's a graying hobby, and it's harder to attract the youth, but I think it's … certainly something which is very important for us to continue to push as an educational thing, and as something that contributes to our national security, in the broadest sense."

Archaic? Hardly.

FISTS and ARRL on Regulation by Bandwidth:

"Nobody's Right If Everybody's Wrong"
 

"Nobody's right if everybody's wrong…" The line comes from a 1960s rock song, and it's brought to mind by the current uproar between FISTS, the society for code preservation, and the ARRL, the national association for amateur radio, over the League's recent changes to its own petition to the FCC for "regulation by bandwidth" instead of operating mode.

The CW enthusiasts in FISTS see the proposal as opening the door for digital "robot" stations, popping up unpredictably across the CW bands and disrupting code contacts in progress. The ARRL apparently sees the changes as necessary to prevent Technicians from discovering that the "regulation by bandwidth" proposal, if adopted in its original form, would permit them to operate data modes on HF and even digital voice at the top ends of what are now the CW subbands on 40 and 15 meters. We see a whole host of problems that really have little, if anything, to do with the subject of the discussions that are clogging up eHam, qrz.com and the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System.

Everybody's Wrong

* The FISTS folks missed the major point of the ARRL's action, which was to do a complete turnaround on the regulation by bandwidth issue; their contention that the League intended to permit unattended digital stations to transmit signals as wide as 3 kHz on the HF bands (as opposed to the current 500 Hz limitation) may or may not have been wrong, but it is not much different from what was proposed initially. While FISTS did confirm the content of the proposal with the FCC, it would have been better-advised -- before issuing a widespread "call to action!" -- to check with ARRL leadership to make sure that what was filed was what was intended. In fact, the ARRL filed an "erratum" with the FCC, claiming the provision in question was the result of a clerical error and the current rule involved should not be changed. However, the erratum was filed only after the controversy erupted.

* The dozens, if not hundreds, of hams on the receiving end of the "call to action" who responded reflexively, would have done better to check the facts first; to read the filings and see what was actually being proposed, rather than taking the "call to action" at face value and filling up the internet with "flames" that often bore no resemblance to facts and sometimes bordered on the ridiculous (such as the assertion that the ARRL was trying to ban all CW operation on HF).

* The ARRL stumbled on a variety of fronts, but primarily in behaving secretively in this matter, informing the membership of its actions only after the FISTS "call to action" resulted in hundreds of angry e-mails, internet postings and FCC comments.

A statement from ARRL CEO Dave Sumner, K1ZZ, said that it became apparent that "some of the proposals contained in the (original) petition had been affected by the changes adopted" by the FCC in its HF phone band expansion and code test elimination rulings, and that the League Board, at its January meeting, "authorized General Counsel Chris Imlay, W3KD, to determine what changes to the petition had to be made to align it with the new FCC rules, as well as which aspects of the petition were not controversial and could reasonably be expected to be included in an FCC Notice of Proposed Rule Making." However, the Board minutes do not reflect this; apparently the decision was made while the Board met "as a Committee of the Whole to discuss regulatory matters" and those discussions are not reported in the minutes.

In mid-February, League officials met with FCC staff to discuss their revised proposal, and properly filed a "Notice of Oral Ex Parte Presentation," which was incorporated into the public record on RM-11306, the petition for regulation by bandwidth. However, this was the only public notification and would have been noticed only by someone carefully tracking the comments on a petition on which comments have been closed for two years. The League did not inform its membership or the general amateur community of this meeting until March 23, more than a month after it happened.

Sumner points out in his statement that the ARRL Board took more than three years to develop the original petition, receiving input from an ad hoc committee and twice soliciting and receiving input from the membership. However, its decision to reverse course and virtually abandon the regulation by bandwidth petition was made in an off-the-record session, without consulting or even notifying the membership. It was done as quietly as possible, apparently in hopes that no one would notice. The strategy obviously backfired.
 

"Aligning" the Proposal With the New Rules

The ARRL says its primary motivation was to bring the regulation-by-bandwidth proposal into line with recent changes in FCC amateur rules. But the League's original petition stated that "(t)he proposed changes are intended and are believed to be generally consistent with the Commission's proposal for 'refarming' the Novice Class subbands … which is now pending." The FCC's final decision on eliminating the Novice subbands and expanding the HF phone subbands was very close to what had been proposed. Very little change would have been required to align the original proposal with the new rules.

The FCC also eliminated code testing for General and Extra Class, and granted all Technicians the HF CW privileges that previously had been given only to Novices and Techs-with-code. In that decision, the FCC was clear that it did not feel it was appropriate to give Technicians additional mode privileges, such as data or voice (except on portions of 10 meters), and the original ARRL petition might have permitted the use of data and digital voice by Technicians on 40 and 15 meters. But the only additional change needed to "align" the regulation by bandwidth proposal with that decision was accomplished with a single line in the revised proposal, stating that "on frequencies below 28.0 MHz, a station having a control operator holding a Novice Class or Technician Class operator license may only transmit a CW emission using the international Morse code." So, the premise of needing to make major changes in order to "align" the petition with the new rules is misleading at best, even though that was the justification presented to the FCC in the "Notice of Oral Ex Parte Presentation."

So what was behind the 180-degree shift? It's hard to say, since the decision was made in secret, the revised proposal was submitted at a private meeting and it was not revealed to the membership until there was no other option. The only hint is Sumner's statement that "(i)t was also apparent that some aspects of the petition remained controversial." Well, yes, they were from the beginning, and still are. The petition calls for a major change in the way our bands are subdivided. That is controversial. It should now be left to the FCC, though, to sift through the many opinions already expressed to develop a Notice of Proposed Rule Making (or to choose not to), and to allow the democratic process to work its magic.

The ARRL made the original proposal on the basis of the need for "facilitating research, development, experimentation and refinement of Amateur Radio digital communications techniques and advanced technologies." This need, which CQ supported in concept (although we disagreed on some of the details), still exists. The current rules are quickly becoming incompatible with new technologies that are not easily defined as CW, RTTY, phone or image. Retaining bandwidth-based regulation for 10 meters and VHF/UHF is meaningless, as is the statement that the Board of Directors continues to stand behind the concept of regulation by bandwidth, as the changes proposed by the League essentially abandon that concept where it is most needed, in the narrow lower-HF bands.

In addition, there were several other changes that either went unnoticed in the original proposal or were slipped into the revision in the guise of "aligning" it with the new rules. For example, changing the definition of "bandwidth" from a precise technical one - "the width of a frequency band outside of which the mean power of the transmitted signal is attenuated at least 26 dB below the mean power of the transmitted signal within the band" - to the much more vague, "For a given class of emission, the width of the frequency band which is just sufficient to ensure the transmission of information at the rate and with the quality required under specified conditions." Or changing the definition of spurious emission to eliminate its reference to an overly broad signal. Or changing the maximum permitted bandwidth of an SSB voice signal (at frequencies above 28 MHz) from the originally proposed 3.5 kHz to 3.0 kHz, without explanation. The original petition discussed various standards in use for SSB voice bandwidth and stated that "ARRL recommends 3.5 kHz as a general rule…" but the revised petition offers no explanation for the change. Why are all of these changes necessary? There is no explanation offered.

Some or all of the changes the League proposed may indeed be justified, and the ARRL may indeed be sincere in its explanations. However, the secretive method in which the changes were proposed, the fact that an "erratum" focusing on a major complaint about the revised proposal was not filed until it blew up in the League's face, and the less than straightforward reasoning given in the explanation for the revisions makes it very difficult for us to accept all of these explanations at face value.

A petition that took three years and several rounds of member input to develop should not be abandoned secretively and without notice to those same members. The ARRL is a membership organization, and calls itself the National Association for Amateur Radio. That being the case, nothing less than complete transparency in its dealings with the FCC is acceptable.
 

For What it's Worth…

"For What it's Worth … " is a new series of online commentaries from CQ magazine. These commentaries generally will be on important topics unable to be covered in the monthly editorials, or essays by guest commentators. When written by the magazine's editor or publisher, they represent the editorial position of the magazine. If written by a guest commentator, they represent only the views of the writer. It is anticipated that these commentaries will be posted on the CQ magazine website and/or distributed via e-mail to those who have signed up to receive news and other information from CQ magazine. These commentaries may also appear from time to time in print, in CQ.