Upping the ante when the FCC fails to do its job.

Short of a writ of mandamus or continually having to get an elected official (usually as equally useless) to tell the FCC to do their jobs here are some ideas.

When the ARRL files comments (publically viewable), they should kindly remind the FCC how long they have done nothing on the matter at hand. For example when I last commented I reminded them we've been waiting since January on the FNPRM for something to come from the comments they solicited. I also reminded them that for the below 30 MHz part we had to get a congress woman involved after screwing around for a decade on the matter.

Use the bulley pulpit. Wayne Green really knew how to get his readers keyed up on new technology in his editorials. Is there a reason the ARRL isn't more frank in their editorial about how unresponsive the FCC is to ham radio? If they can harness even a portion of the ham populus similar to how Wayne did, then imagine even just 100 hams commenting to the FCC. They never seem to encourage their readers to comment to the FCC. There is power in numbers, use it!

Be bold. When you do have a face to face meeting with the FCC, point blank ask them when they next expect to make a decision on the matter at hand. Tell them you'd like to set a schedule to meet bi monthly till the matter is resolved and ask what progess, sticking points etc and with who are at hand each time you meet.

Keep your membership informed on when you'll next meet and what progress was made.

Moving foward

Good to see the ARRL is at least trying occasionally. If they did this more often I'd at least be able to speak more positively about them.

July 11 Notice of Ex Parte Meeting

I like this summary. It's inline with what I have been saying for some time.

The fundamental purpose of the amateur service is to encourage experimentation with radio technologies of all kinds “to contribute to the advancement of the radio art”, to encourage “advancing skills in both communication and the technical phases of the art”, and most importantly, to “expand the existing reservoir within the amateur radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts”.1 Unfortunately, significant aspects of the Part 97 amateur rules no longer provide the basis and flexibility needed to foster experimentation with some of the leading modern techniques. The rules need updating to delete unnecessary provisions and outdated restrictions that impair the core purpose of the service. In short, aspects of the rules constitute an impediment to amateur efforts to attract and teach the next generation of American youth that we rely upon to enhance America’s global competitiveness by continuing America’s leadership in wireless communications technologies.

Now if the league would share what their next move is, I'd likely rejoin. Getting up in the FCC's face once a decade isn't really enough to impress me.

One other thing that remains to be seen is if the ARDC/amprnet POP's will lead to anything productive in terms of new protocols, internal network developments etc. I have this funny feeling it's going to be more of an administrative burden than the latter. For starters there its taking an unsually long time to publicly launch. I mean when it was a one man show, Brian Kantor pulled things off in an impressive turn around time while still working. A plug and play VPN has its place, like for repeater sites, espically as IPv4 addresses shrink and global NAT becomes a headache for ham radio connected applications. But there will also be a subset of people trying to use it from home. And there as of the momement is no real reason for that type of use. So I am concerned it will be used nefariously in those cases. If the internal/intranet aspects of 44net are developed then home use makes sense. I personally like a trust network of sorts where there is an educational barrier to keep out the clueless ones. Besides ham radio should be about learning. How on god's greeen earth is anyone who cannot figure out how to connect to the network right now using IPencap going to ever make any meaningful contribution to the network?

Maybe the ARDC should develop some furthering education classes? People like awards in the contesting area, and the FCC license in reality isn't very technical. We clearly need more technical people in the hobby to help move things forward.

The development of the ARDC foundation and grant giving is the right idea. But in my opinion it sadly hasn't yet managed to put any new technology in the hands of many to truely change ham radio for the better. If they or some other organization could achive something simular to what the Raspberry Pi foundation, I would be thoroughly impressed. How in the heck does ham radio get things manufactured?

In summary the two biggest issues I see for ham radio (with a USA bias) is getting outdated rules changed and getting new technology manufactured. A good start to the latter would be first to identify what we need, i.e. that technology task force idea that I have mentioned before.

The latest FCC waiting game

In April I filed reply comments mostly to give the nudge to what Steve Stroh wrote. I have been down this utterly wasteful road before. Back in January of 2024 I wrote comments to the FNPRM on WT Docket 16-239 (the symbol rate).

That whole symbol rate thing started nearest I can tell around 2003 (RM-11306). And when that failed, it was reintroduced in 2013.

After it not going anywhere for a long time, the ARRL had congress woman Debbie Lesko step in. Finally in late 2023, the HF portion was enacted.

But this latest request in April for suggested changes to techical rules is not new. In 2017 the Technological Advisory Council (TAC) made a Technical Inquiry Into Reforming Technical Regulations. Bruce Perens, K6BP wrote an excellent look at things. But there were no changes to Part 97. Yet other services did manage to see changes.

So the question is what has the FCC done recently for ham radio? And how long are we going to wait this time?

Three things.

There ought to be a way to write off wasted time interacting with the government on your taxes, this might provide them an incentive to do their jobs. (Don't even get me going on Thomas Woodrow Wilson)

Writ of Mandamus. Now that we are paying fees, aren't we entitled to some level of service? (By the way it would be interesting to calculate how much money ham radio as a whole annually submits to the Failed Clown College)

And lastly, the more sane thing would be if the FCC would be more transparent and state in their inital request the expected time frame for decision-making. Heck if you're over 70-80 years old I see no reason to waste your time writing anything to them as you'll never see the fruits of your labors. You should be made aware of this up front.

Again in my opinion if they cannot modify rules in a timely manner they do not serve our interest well. Technology is advancing faster than we can get rules changed. We'd be better off having the whole administration of the amateur service moved to a third party. So much of it is already, like the testing, repeater coordination. All things they used to do.

44Net

In my last post I shed some light on how I feel there are good things being funded by the ARDC, but in the end its not really changing a whole lot.

It's origional inception was loaning address space to hams. And when you read their page:

"The goals are to of advance the state of the art of Amateur Radio networking, and to educate amateur radio operators in these techniques."

It's not clear what people are doing within the space. Is any of it aligning with the above stated goals? Or is the bulk of address space merely being used as an extension of the internet?

I'm a bit of an advoate for building the 44 intranet (read that again). The internal network. I have pointed out somethings a while back.

I'd also like to see some networking advancements. Are there any hams as cool at Brian Kantor these days, writing new protocols like he did way back when with NNTP? Could hams contribute to a movement to get the rest of the world to better adopt IPv6?

The problem as I see it, is a lack of direction. Identifiying things that ought to happen, (be researched written or built) and matching that with a bounty grant makes more sense to me than doling out the cash when ever club wants to have an ARES trailer.

Meshtastic

Years ago I had built a 900 MHz analog repeater. Mostly to learn about the propagation, and because my friend in Milwaukee needed someone to build a 900 MHz repeater. So I built two. Mine was a lower power, the lower profile one on my tower at home.

So anyway when friend or two brought up messing with Meshtastic on 900 MHz, I was like sure because I already have spare antennnas and other things. The other part is because we were never able to deploy a wideband (useful) mesh network here due to the terrain and a lack of sites. So this is sub GHz, where things are more forgiving and there is a lot of multipath. It's also narrowband (less useful transport though), so the signal strengths can be less, etc.

So far its been interesting. And I want to read more about doing codec2 over it. I'd also like to see more technical information out there. Receiver (BER) performance data. Reviews of the Chinese amplifiers. Are they harmonic spewing junk, or decent. If I was the ARRL, this is what I would print in QST in place of the endless of traditional HT product/equipment reviews.

Speaking of that, this is exactly the type of thing I'd like to see in a 5 watt handheld. Repeater sites are getting hard to obtain and maintain, so if you can just use everyone else to relay your signal that seems ideal. If this was something M17 could do, I guess I'd be more interested in it.

On another topic, I filed FCC reply comments, but honestly I don't have a lot of hope. That is why I kept my effort in the matter brief. For the amount of time I spend communicating with government officals (mostly in vain), there really should be a way to write off the time I am waisting on my taxes. Maybe then with that mechanism they would get off their duffs.

As usual the ARRL's comments did not impress me. They are still beating the emcomm drum, and have some sort of Winlink penchant. If they wanted no bandwidth limits for HF (which doesn't seem like the best idea), then why did you seek 2.8 KHz, and thus waste the FCC's time? And once again they don't seem to give a rip about VHF/UHF.... yet those are the most idle bands and bands of use to commerical interests.

So while I haven't had much hope for the ARRL, the ARDC I had hope for. And honestly I am losing that as well. There really needs to be a guy like Wayne Green with some vision. I have written the ARRL about the concept of bringing back the future systems committee, but they are to busy sinking their own ship it seems. I really think the ARDC needs to take a survey or form a committee to identify benefical technology the community could use. And then offer bounty grants to make it happen. The bulk of the grants they give really don't do a whole lot to potentially change the present amateur radio dynamic. To do that you have to have vision and also get things into peoples hands.

I mentioned M17 before. Does anyone know how many radios are flying off the Connect Systems shelves? Jerry has always been fairly open about things, perhaps one of the video podcasters could interview him on the M17 matter?