> I would hope that frequency coordinators would opt to give > out available frequencies to "Open" systems.
I missed this comment as the message came through my mailbox, but I need to dispel a common misconception of the role of frequency coordination. I'm the chairman of the Minnesota Repeater Council, and the outgoing president of the National Frequency Coordinators' Council. Frequency coordination is not about making value judgments. It's about recommending frequencies so that repeaters don't interfere with each other. "Closed repeaters are bad" is a value judgment. A closed repeater does not interfere with an open repeater any more or less than an open repeater; the converse is also true. It's also voluntary and advisory. A frequency coordinator has no power beyond persuasion. He cannot tell a repeater owner that he can't put up a repeater, or that he must take it down; all he can do is coordinate or not coordinate. If he tells you he can't coordinate you on a given frequency at a given site, you're still perfectly free to put up your repeater; if you cause interference to a coordinated system, it's your job to mitigate it in that case. The FCC has repeatedly said that it's up to repeater owners to say who can and cannot use their system. They believe this is an essential power that they must have in order to keep their systems operating within the rules. They regularly issue warnings and citations to hams who operate on repeaters after the owner tells them to stay off. They don't care how that decision is reached. The open vs. closed debate has been going on since before I got my first ticket in 1971. It's not going to go away soon, because it's a clash of two fundamentally different viewpoints. One side doesn't understand how a repeater owner can, so they believe, effectively claim ownership of a frequency; the other doesn't see why the first demands that anyone and everyone be allowed to use a station they own. The latter can be shown by analogy: would you let any ham off the street walk into your living room and use your station without any sort of control, or support? D-Star is the way it is in large part because of the design of the systems. As I said in another message, gateway access is something that costs most systems real money, both in equipment and ongoing expenses. Those costs must be recouped somehow. Requiring club membership to gain access to the gateway is one way to do so; it's quite common, not all that expensive, and very straightforward. Whether or not you approve, it's going to continue, and my guess is that it'll become the accepted standard. Why would you want to use a facility that you're not helping to support? The bottom line is that closed systems are explicitly allowed by the FCC, and coordinators do not have a role in encouraging or discouraging them. That's simply not our job. Jay Maynard, K5ZC Chairman, Minnesota Repeater Council
