But.... <grin> Two points: IARU / ARRL band plan to manage the frequencies, allocating areas for unattended, digital, analog, etc signals. The underlying regulation of "good amateur practice" as the stick for enforcing the band plan. If you operate unattended in the analog band plan section the OO would get onto you, and so would the FCC eventually. Same for operating analog in the digital section.
- 73 - Rud Merriam K5RUD ARES AEC Montgomery County, TX http://mysticlakesoftware.com/ -----Original Message----- From: KH6TY [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2010 2:20 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [digitalradio] Re: 1976 FCC - Delete all Emission Types from Part 97 Paul, it works, at least in part, because the huge numbers of US amateurs in proportion across the border are regulated both by mode and by bandwidth. Radio does not stop at borders, of course, so what makes it work for the US helps make it work for Canada. Imagine what it would be like if there were no US regulations on unattended operations. Those automatic messaging systems would be covering the phone bands as well as everywhere else. They don't currently, only because they are not allowed to, but they would expand to cover the phone bands if there were regulation only by bandwidth so they could escape QRM by others like themselves. The bandwidth of Pactor-III is roughly the same as a phone signal, and unattended stations cannot QSY even if requested to do so. Imagine also if spread spectrum were allowed anywhere in the current phone and upper data segments. The complaints about NCDXF and Olivia QRM from ROS would be nothing compared to what it is already if spread spectrum were allowed anywhere in the same bandwidth as phone, and hordes of operators wanted to use ROS, and not just a relative few. This is another US regulation that is helping to limit the number of stations using a very wide bandwidth (i.e. to 222 MHz and above) when a more narrow bandwidth mode like Olivia or PSK31 can do the same, or almost the same, job in one fifth the space or less. If there were unlimited room on HF, regulation by bandwidth would work, as it already basically does at VHF frequencies and up, even under US regulations. Your question is a valid one, but the subject was hotly debated several years ago, resulting in no change to the status quo, because, although imperfect, it seems to work for the huge majority of amateurs all trying to use a very limited amount of spectrum on HF. Regulation by bandwidth would work if everyone were fair, but everyone is not fair, so there must be regulation by mode to protect the small or weak from the big and powerful, and to protect phone operators from QRM from wideband digital operations. Phone is wide and digital is usually more narrow, so regulation by bandwidth keeps phone out of the data segments, but would not keep wide data out of the phone segments. Once you make exceptions to regulation by bandwidth to exclude certain modes in a space, you no longer have regulation by bandwidth, but a combination of regulation by bandwidth and regulation by mode, which is what we have now in the US. 73 - Skip KH6TY
