Jack, thank you. Pete and I had a separate and direct email exchange underway, and I feel there's no bad blood.
I really dislike confrontation. I prefer collaboration, and it's my nature to spend a lot of time making sure the other guy feels like he's getting heard -- in addition to making sure I actually understand what he's saying. We could fill a book with the societal problems displayed in ham radio. The hobby is tracking rather faithfully the general decline in society at large. Unfortunately, the last remaining institution that might have served as a restraining, stabilizing, and positive/nurturing influence has abdicated the role. The reasons are complex, but mostly seem rooted in a failure to keep up with the cool stuff in the hobby, while being stubbornly loyal to the way it was always done. Now, it's too late to stem a major loss in support (they really are down to about 20 percent representation, by their own official figures), and their confused and haphazard leadership behaves as if it is very scared of the future. So now they've overreacted and are embracing the novelty of "digital" peddled to society by commercial interests (HDTV, cellphones, IPods), but for the hobby via a charismatic leader who is pushing a specific digital hookup between ham radio and the Internet. The group who spawned this proposal further corrupted the already shaky political process the League has chronically failed to repair. This would include the longstanding lack of published criteria for such "ad hoc" committees employed over the years to shape the leadership's decision-making. I hate being a negative, pain-in-the-ass about their system, but their methods are not doing anyone any good, and their bandwidth scheme is only the latest example of faulty product from a defective system. I have to have faith the FCC will see it the same way and toss it out. There **are** many niches, specialties, and minority operating interests in the hobby. I am of like-mind with your view we really must pull together and minimize these little turf wars. The problem remains that the approach the League took foments just that kind of infighting. The best answer, for the meantime, is to fight efforts to give what most people would consider an unfair advantage to one category of activity, inappropriately using the regulatory structure besides. After that, if there's still a stomach to radically change what we now have, perhaps a group will coalesce out of various "special interests" including the AM community, to step around the League and forge a more viable approach in a process that would yield voluntary, broadbased support. The ARRL's leadership really needs to be smacked around on this one so they will sit down at a table not their own and honestly take part on a lateral, evenhanded basis with other, more active and involved groups and individuals representing all our activities at the outset. For something of this magnitude, that's not an unreasonable plan. Paul - > Message: 3 > Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 18:35:40 +0000 > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: Re: [AMRadio] ARRL band width plan not > accepted > To: Discussion of AM Radio > > === message truncated === __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
