Todd, you are correct. The ARRL has been obsessed with spectrum conservation for decades. It might have made some sense at one time. But the compulsion to make every emission as close to knife blade narrow as possible is out of touch with reality now. Not to mention that when I finish using 6, 8 or even 10 KHz for a QSO, the space doesn't go away, it is there for someone else to use, like a just vacated parking space. The ARRL makes it seem like every time a QSO takes place, the spectrum used is consumed and gone forever like oil.
Now, we have fewer serious HF users. ARRL likes to trumpet that there are over 600,000 U.S. ham licenses out there but no mention is ever made of how many are SK, shack-on-a-belt VHF hams, XYLs who got tickets to make OM happy but never operate, emergency workers who never operate, people who lost interest due to obstacles such as station cost, technical problems, and lack of elmering, those who operate in the extreme background with PSK31, QRP...I estimate the number of hams in the U.S. who regularly transmit an impact signal on HF to be around 50,000. The ARRL would do well to address the reasons behind the obvious decline in HF activity. They did pretty well working on BPL but now in addition to that, they must work on more serious challenges: Antenna restrictions, and RFI from unintentional emitters that were cheaply made and imported. They must resist their pathological need to control U.S. ham radio and redirect this compulsion to targets where it will benefit the Amateur Radio Service. 73 Rob K5UJ > The bigger issue to me is why there is so much effort being put into > such extensive regulation of the amateur community with less and less > activity on the bands. Rather than encouraging only certain types of > operating modes, the focus should be on operating in general. > > ~ Todd, KA1KAQ/4 > ______________________________________________________________ Our Main Website: http://www.amfone.net AMRadio mailing list Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/amradio@mailman.qth.net/ List Rules (must read!): http://w5ami.net/amradiofaq.html List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Post: AMRadio@mailman.qth.net To unsubscribe, send an email to amradio-requ...@mailman.qth.net with the word unsubscribe in the message body. This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
