The RASON Monitor. FCC Proposes Dropping Morse Code Requirement. Newsletter of the Radio Amateur Society of Norwich

Transcription

1 The RASON Monitor Newsletter of the Radio Amateur Society of Norwich FCC Proposes Dropping Morse Code Requirement Entirely The FCC has proposed dropping the 5 WPM Morse code element as a requirement to obtain an Amateur Radio license of any class. The Commission included the recommendation in a July 19 Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) in WT Docket , but it declined to go along with any other proposed changes to Amateur Service licensing rules or operating privileges. Changes to Part 97 that the FCC proposed in the NPRM would not become final until the Commission gathers additional public comments, formally adopts any new rules and concludes the proceeding with a Report and Order specifying the changes and an effective date. That s not likely to happen for several months. Based upon the petitions and comments, we propose to amend our amateur service rules to eliminate the requirement that individuals pass a telegraphy examination in order to qualify for any amateur radio operator license, the FCC said. The NPRM consolidated 18 petitions for rule making from the amateur community--including one from the ARRL-- that had proposed a wide range of additional changes to the amateur rules. The FCC said the various petitions had attracted 6200 comments from the amateur community, which soon will have the opportunity to comment again--this time on the FCC s NPRM. The Commission said it believes dropping the 5 WPM Morse examination would encourage more people to become Amateur Radio operators and would eliminate a requirement that s now unnecessary and may discourage current licensees from advancing their skills. It also said the change would promote more efficient use of amateur spectrum. To support dropping the code requirement, the FCC cited changes in Article 25 of the international Radio Regulations adopted at World Radiocommunication Conference WRC-03 deleted the Morse testing requirement for amateur applicants seeking HF privileges and left it up to individual countries to determine whether or not they want to mandate Morse testing. Several countries already have dropped their Morse requirements for HF access. ARRL CEO David Sumner, K1ZZ, said he was not surprised to see the FCC propose scrapping the Morse requirement altogether, although the League had called for retaining the 5 WPM requirement only for Amateur Extra class applicants. Sumner expressed dismay, however, that the FCC turned away proposals from the League and other petitioners to create a new entry-level Amateur Radio license class. We re disappointed that the Commission prefers to deny an opportunity to give Amateur Radio the restructuring it needs for the 21st century, he said. It appears that the Commission is taking the easy road, but the easy road is seldom the right road. Sumner said ARRL officials and the Board of Directors will closely study the 30-page NPRM and comment further once they ve had an opportunity to consider the Commission s stated rationales for its proposals. In 2004, the League called on the FCC to create a new entry-level license, reduce the number of actual license classes to three and drop the Morse code testing requirement for all classes except for Amateur Extra. Among other recommendations, the League asked the FCC to automatically upgrade Technician licensees to General and Advanced licensees to Amateur Extra. In this week s NPRM, the FCC said it was not persuaded such automatic upgrades were in the public interest. The FCC said it did not believe a new entry-level license class was warranted because August, 2005 Next meeting: August 18 Topic: FCC Morse Code Proposal

2 Contacts: President: Gary Divan WT1SND (860) Vice President: Bob Munro W1AMF (860) Recording Secretary: Tom Dean KB1JIJ Treasurer: Lou Herman KB1DED Tech Committee Chairman: Mike Martell N1HFX (860) Newsletter Editor: Chip Griffin N1MIE (860) Red Cross Contact: Tom Scott WA2RYV Norwich Civil Prep. Liaison: Scott Moore W1SSN current Novice and Tech Plus licensees will easily be able upgrade to General once the code requirement goes away. The Commission also said its Phone Band Expansion (or Omnibus ) NPRM in WT Docket already addresses some of the other issues petitioners raised. A 60-day period for the public to comment on the NPRM in WT will begin once the notice appears in the Federal Register. Reply comments will be due within 75 days. ARRL Board Adopts Modified Regulation by Bandwidth Proposal Following considerable discussion and debate, the ARRL Board of Directors has approved a modified set of recommendations to regulate the use of amateur spectrum by emission bandwidth rather than by emission mode. Last April, the ARRL Executive Committee reached consensus on a set of regulation-by-bandwidth proposals (which can be found on the web at, to serve as the basis of an FCC Petition for Rule Making. Following additional fine tuning based on hundreds of comments from the amateur community, the Board formally adopted a further-modified plan at its July meeting. The revised plan includes a stipulation that the League will promptly undertake a procedure to establish a band plan to be utilized with the proposed subband allocation petition, and, until such time as that band plan is in place, the existing band plan will be in force. ARRL CEO David Sumner, K1ZZ, remarked after the Board s 12-3 vote that improved band planning is critical to the success of the League s regulation-by-bandwidth proposals and will require the support of the amateur community at large. I think it s fair to say that the Board recognizes that regulation by bandwidth is not going to work without a spirit of cooperation among amateurs pursuing different interests, he said, any more than current regulations would be adequate without a spirit of cooperation. Sumner 2

3 Repeaters RASON PL=156.7 Norwich, CT PL=156.7 Norwich, CT SCRAMS PL=156.7 Groton, CT PL=156.7 Groton, CT PL=156.7 Waterford, CT Others PL=156.7 Ledyard, CT PL=156.7 Salem, CT PL=156.7 Subbase, CT PL=100.0 Westerly, RI Packet RASON N1NW PBBS/Node Glastonbury W1EDF FlexNet Node Local Nets Traffic E.C.T.N Daily 2100 ARES S.E.C.T Mon 2000 K1ARC st Wed 2000 ARES HF Thu 1900 Weather NL Co WN Wed st Wed 2000 Skywarn on demand Fun TIPS Net Tue 1930 VHF/UHF Sun m Phone ± Thu 2000 pointed out that under the current rules, RTTY and data enthusiasts may, by rule, operate in the low end of the CW subbands. They don t, because to do so would disrupt amateur CW, he said. Sumner said that if the FCC ultimately implements the modified ARRL recommendations, there s no reason to believe that amateurs will operate right up to the absolute limit of what the FCC says they may, any more than they do now. The regulation-by-bandwidth issue dominated the Board s second meeting of the year in Windsor, Connecticut. After a great deal of give and take among its members, the Board ultimately okayed raising the maximum bandwidth proposed for frequencies below 29 MHz from 3.0 khz to 3.5 khz. A provision permitting the continued use of double-sideband AM with bandwidth of up to 9 khz was retained. Significantly, the Board also agreed that maximum permitted bandwidth should be defined in terms of necessary rather than occupied bandwidth. In addition, the modified proposal removes the exception for independent sideband (ISB) emissions and drops certain mode restrictions on Novice and Technician class operators. The ARRL proposal would leave two important FCC rules unchanged. Part (a) says: No amateur station transmission shall occupy more bandwidth than necessary for the information rate and emission type being transmitted, in accordance with good amateur practice. Part (a) reads: In all respects not specifically covered by FCC Rules each amateur station must be operated in accordance with good engineering and good amateur practice. Per the Board s motion, the ARRL Executive Committee will review the final rule making petition, which will be filed with the FCC at the Committee s discretion. The Board began work on the bandwidth concept in In other action, the ARRL Board adopted a resolution to establish an ARRL VHF/UHF Advisory Committee (VUAC) to address contesting issues over a period of no more than three years. The new panel, to be comprised of exceptionally qualified and recognized members of the VHF/UHF community, will seek input from VHF/UHF contesting public, identify important issues and 3

4 Upcoming Events July 9-10 IARU HF World Championships 16 QSO Party RTTY 21 Monthly Meeting August 6-7 ARRL UHF Contest 18 Monthly Meeting QSO Party Phone ARRL 10 GHz and Up Contest 21 NoBARC Hamfest September 5 QRP Labor Day CW Sprint 10 Sprint CW (20-24L) ARRL September VHF QSO Party 12 End-Of-Summer PSK31 Sprint (16-20L) 15 Monthly Meeting 17 Sprint Phone (20-24L) ARRL 10 GHz and Up Contest 18 Weston CT Hamfest ARRL EME 2304 MHz and Above October 8 Sprint RTTY (20-24L) 9 Nutmeg Hamfest (nutmeghamfest.com) 20 Monthly Meeting ARRL EME 50 MHz MHz ARCI Fall QSO Party November 5-7 ARRL November Sweepstakes (CW) ARRL EME 50 MHz MHz 17 Monthly Meeting ARRL November Sweepstakes (phone) December 1 ARCI TopBand CW & SSB Sprint 2-4 ARRL 160m Contest 5 ARCI Holiday Spirits Homebrew Sprint ARRL 10m Contest tbd Joint Club Christmas Party seek the sense of the public on those issues. The Board also adopted five strategies to address improvements in the ARRL advocacy program and members-only features of the Web site, and review and analysis of ARRL programs. ARRL President Jim Haynie, W5JBP, chaired this month s Board meeting. Radio Amateurs of Canada President Earle Smith, VE6NM, was a guest of the Board. CT Section News Section Leadership: ASMs: K1STM, KY1F, NK1J, N1FNE, K1BRF; Bulletin Manager KD1YV; Official Observer Coordinator W1GC; Public Information Coordinator W1FXQ; Section Emergency Coordinator AB1CR; Section Traffic Manager K1HEJ; Technical Coordinator N1KHB. ARES Area 4 members participated in the MS 150 Bike Tour under the direction of DEC Wayne, N1CLV who recently took the helm from Hank, KA1WTS. Hank resigned as DEC to attend to other duties within the community that relate to emergency preparedness. A hearty thank you to Hank who did a terrific job as DEC and as leader at Top Off! Hank isn t going away though; he is an active OES and I m sure will be very helpful to Wayne in his new role. Many thanks to Wayne for his willingness to serve as DEC. Dave, K1DAV, DEC Area 5 is still looking for help with the Tour of Litchfield Hills event that will take place on August 7. Contact k1dav@arrl.net if you want to get some good ARES experience and have some fun! Thanks to the efforts of Randy, W1IN and Joe N1KHB, we were able to hold a field day this year on the lawn of the Capitol. The QRP setup was impressive. Randy provided us with the following equipment: Transceivers 2 SGC 2020 ADSP meter QRP SSB/CW Transceivers; ATV: 2 Homebrew 1.2 GHz Video tranceivers mw commercial video transmitter (Modified for 1.2 GHz ham band operation); 1 5 TFT video display Antennas: 1 Cushcraft R meter vertical; 1 EndFedz 40/20 meter end fed half wave Antenna Supports; 2 48 Fiberglass interlocking mast systems in 4 sections (28 used for each 4

5 end of half wave and 12 used for base of R7, 28 in reserve). Power: amp hour starved electrolite battery; 1 20 amp hour starved electrolite battery (back up); 1 14 amp hour NiCad battery (computer power and back up). All of the above were charged by solar energy using photovoltaic panels. Computers: 1 Sony Viao Mini notebook; 1 HP Tablet PC Networked via Bluetooth PAN Running N3FJP FDNet Software. Many thanks to the operators who came to participate: Mark WA8SME and Doris KF6QKL who brought Sean KB1LUZ, a 9-year-old member of The Ct Amateur Radio League of Youth, Richard KB1DMX, Rose Anne KB1DMW, John KB1KKV, Randy W1IN and Joe N1KHB. Many other ops stopped by which of course included your SM and SEC to lend support and offer congrats on their fine setup. Randy and Joe did a superb job. TC Joe had an impressive array of handouts available to the public. SEC AB1CR and I enjoyed visiting many of you on Field Day weekend. The Northville Amateur Repeater Association held its very first Field Day--see photos on their Web site: na1ra.com. Many other club Web pages have photos of Field Day so check them out. Due to a last minute cancellation, it became possible to do the Community Education Program in CT. This program will be facilitated by Bill, W1WJB. A number of emergency officials from a wide variety of organizations including CERT, Red Cross, public utilities, PD, FD, EMT have been invited. The purpose of the program is NOT to recruit new hams but to better explain how our services fulfill their needs when all else fails. This meeting will be held on Saturday, July 30 at 10:00 a.m. in the New Canaan Number One Firehouse. Attendance is by invitation only. Call to get information on how to invite your favorite emergency official. Keep cool in this humid weather Betsey Doane, K1EIC-k1eic@arrl.org Thoughts from the Editor What do you all think of the latest news from the FCC? There has been a ton of discussion on the topic for quite a long time online. Many of our peers think it s a good move for the hobby and the country. Some others think it s a terrible move which will doom the hobby. Be sure to share your thoughts with us. Regardless of which side you support be sure to let the FCC know via their comments page. Italy Joins No-code Ranks as FCC Revives Morse Debate in the US Italy is reported to be the latest country added to the list of those that no longer require Amateur Radio applicants to have passed a Morse code examination to gain HF access. The Daily DX < dailydx.com> reported this week that current IWprefix no-code VHF/UHF licensees in Italy now will be allowed operate on HF. Canada eliminated Morse as the sole additional requirement for HF access in late July. To date, more than two dozen countries around the world--including such major players as the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and New Zealand--no longer require Amateur Radio applicants to pass a Morse code examination to operate below 30 MHz. If the FCC s past observations on the subject are any clue, the US may join the no-code-required club in the future. We believe that an individual s ability to demonstrate increased Morse code proficiency is not necessarily indicative of that individual s ability to contribute to the advancement of the radio art, the FCC maintained in its December 1999 Amateur Radio restructuring Report and Order (R&O) < As a result, we find that such a license qualification rule is not in furtherance of the purpose of the amateur service, and we do not believe that it continues to serve a regulatory purpose. The Commission in 1999 retained a minimal 5 WPM Morse requirement for all license classes only because of the treaty obligation then in place. World Radiocommunication Conference 2003 (WRC-03) subsequently decided to let countries determine for themselves whether or not to require amateur applicants to demonstrate Morse ability. In its Notice of Proposed Rule Making and Or- 5

6 der (NPRM&O) < in WT Docket , released July 19, 2005, the FCC proposed to eliminate the 5 WPM telegraphy examination altogether. At the same time, it dismissed petitions calling for--among other things- -a new entry-level license with HF privileges. In wording that closely mirrored remarks in its 1999 restructuring R&O, the Commission said its review of the 18 petitions and comments in the proceeding showed that the majority agree with its 1999 stance on the Morse requirement. The FCC said it believes it should treat Morse code like any other Amateur Radio mode. The FCC further said it was not persuaded by the ARRL s petition request to retain the 5 WPM Morse requirement solely for Amateur Extra applicants. But perhaps recalling what it also said in that few issues coming before the Commission present such a clear dichotomy of viewpoints as Morse code--the FCC stopped short of making the Morse requirement disappear. Instead, it invited another round of comments. The US Amateur Radio community has taken up the Commission s offer with great enthusiasm. As of week s end, more than 1400 comments had been posted via the FCC s Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS). The majority focused solely on the Morse issue. While most tend to file brief yea or nay comments, many postings reflect the deeply emotional nature of the Morse debate. Those favoring the Morse requirement frequently suggest that dropping it altogether will lead to a overall decline in the skill and dedication of new operators. Others cite Morse as a longstanding tradition that ought not be cast aside lightly, and a few cite its potential in emergency communication. The FCC already dismissed such arguments in Those endorsing its elimination often assert that Morse is largely irrelevant today and that retaining the requirement is keeping a lot of people from pursuing Amateur Radio. Several commenters also have contended that Morse code should rise or fall on its own now, not be mandated for licensure. These are arguments the FCC essentially agreed with in 1999 and again in Generally speaking, the Commission has been disinclined to revisit what it considers once-trod ground. Following WRC-03, Switzerland became the first country to announce it was eliminating Morse code as a requirement for HF access. It was followed in short order by the United Kingdom. In addition to Italy, Canada, Switzerland, the UK, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, the list of countries that have dropped Morse code as a requirement includes the Czech Republic, Spain, South Africa, Iceland, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Kenya, Luxembourg (provisional CEPT Class 2 HF access), The Netherlands, Norway, Poland (limited), South Africa, Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea and Singapore. To file on-line comments on the FCC NPRM&O in WT Docket or to view others comments in the proceeding, visit the ECFS site < and click on Submit a Filing or Search for Filed Comments. In either case, type in the Proceeding field, being careful to include the hyphen but not the quotation marks. Directions for filing comments, which can be in the form of an attached document, are on the ECFS site. Click on Getting Started to learn more. The FCC is not expected to release a Report and Order in WT Docket until late this year at the soonest. 6

7 Meeting Minutes for July 21 Location: Franklin Congregational Church Gary Divan, WT1SND, called the meeting to order at 7:53 PM. A motion, introduced by KA1CQR, seconded by KB1HHN and modified by W1FJW, passed 13 to 0 to reduce the number of members required for a quorum from 12 to 8. Norwich Utilities is being billed for a net zero account against our phone number. Bob will contact the SBC Account Manager to straighten out the situation. and 440. This was most likely an indirect strike. Bob, W1AMF will look into it soon. KA1CQR has been nominated to become a control operator by two of the three current control operators. The meeting was adjourned at 8:53 PM. There was no program. The next meeting will be held on at 7:30 PM on Thursday, August 18 at the Franklin Congregational Church. Respectfully Submitted, Tom Dean, KB1JIJ, Recording Secretary, RASON The possibility of using a prepaid cell phone for a phone link was discussed; this would cost about $200. The idea will be kept in mind for the future in case Norwich Utilities has a problem with our phone bill in the future. Annual elections of club officers will be held in September. Scott, W1SSN, and Chuck, KA1CQR, were nominated to the Nominating Committee. SCRAMS will host the Christmas Party this year. Hank, KA1WTS, reported that on September 16, at New London s Boat, Books, and Brushes festival, ARES will have a special event station on boat the Coast Guard ship the Eagle. Contact Wayne, N1CLV, if interested in operating. The possibility of having an inter-club get-together/ meeting was discussed. This would be a social event and could include everyone in ARES Area 4. This was an alternative to joining other local clubs such as Tri-City and SCRAMS. The treasurer s read was read and accepted. The meeting minutes from last meeting were read and accepted. The repeater recently took a lighting strike. The two meter side is fine, but there are problems with 220 7