From: Larry Will <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
This is a little off-topic from the band plan issue, but you brought up some points worthy of discussion, particularly since so many amateurs who have become licensed since 1990 are likely to be completely unaware of the fraudulent tactics used by FCC rulemakers in the proceeding that created the current power output rules.
b: As to AM go back and read the articles in ER in the first year. You'll find the ARRL tried to save the 750 watts carrier output when the Grandfather clause was sunsetting in 1989-90 and that another article by a gentleman who talked with several staffers in the FCC, the staff was (1) worried about TVI and Hi-Fi IX and telephone IX and was convinced that lower AM power was needed
They were talking out of both sides of their mouth, and putting their own deceptive spin on the issue. The original power limit docket proposal specifically stated that "Our intent is not to change the actual power levels that amateurs use, but to improve the method of power measurement." In an interview with an FCC lawyer, published in CQ magazine a few months before the power limit docket was released, he said that the old DC input standard "was not so much a problem, but an embarrassement" to the FCC because the method was "archaic".
And you brought up a more fundamental question. Is the purpose of a legal power limit to protect other licensed users who share spectrum on and in the vicinity of the authorised transmit frequency, or is it to protect devices that happen to be physically located near a clean transmitter whose spurious emissions are well within the bounds of good engineering design, i.e. to protect devices that inadvertently act as radio receivers due to design deficiencies?
To phrase it more bluntly, should our power limit be further limited to accomodate consumer electronics manufacturers who are too cheap to spend a few extra pennies per unit to make their products immune to rfi from signals that lie outside their intended operating range?
and (2) they only had equipment to measure PEP and they (The FCC) wanted to not have a different standard for different types of emissions in the amateur service. The FCC had selfish internal interests to make a uniform power output standard.
A bogus argument. It's absurd to say that FCC inspection personnel had only equipment available to measure PEP. They had stated repeatedly that their standard measuring instrument for station inspections was a Bird 43 wattmeter - an average indicating instrument that can measure PEP only with a special add-on attachment. Their inspectors measure average carrier power output, not PEP, from AM broadcast stations, so how could it be so difficult to take similar measurements from an amateur station?
The Canadian regulations are shorter in length than ours, yet they were able to word their power rule in such a manner as to include a separate measurement standard for carrier modes like AM and non-carrier modes like SSB. Does that mean that Canadians are supposed to somehow be smarter than United States-ese?
Don, k4kyv ______________________________________________________________ Our Main Website: http://www.amfone.net AMRadio mailing list List Rules (must read!): http://w5ami.net/amradiofaq.html List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.html Post: mailto:[email protected] To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body.
