Hi John, While I agree with much of your argument, there could be a price to pay in the form of Equipment Type Approval.if further regulations were imposed on the Amateur Service. Without doubt Type Approval would increase the selling price of the "black boxes", and put an end to the use of homebrewed equipment.
As matters stand, the Amateur Service is viewed by most Authorities as a "Self Regulatory" Service. The standards for amateur transmitter harmonic and spurious levels are intended to protect Services other than the Amateur Service from interference caused by amateur transmitters, a fact that I am sure you already know. There is talk about reducing these levels. IMHO the problem of clicks, splatter ad nauseum must be solved somehow by us amateurs without having further regulations imposed. For example here in Europe deliberate jamming is a serious problem, but attempts have been and are being made by amateurs to find the culprits. 73, Geoff GM4ESD juergen piezo <plebia...@yahoo.com> wrote on Tuesday, December 01, 2009 at 8:35 PM: Hi Matt Most of us are black box operators. We need regulations for the amateur service that specifies how our transmitters must perform, just like every other HF spectrum user. Its amazing how the amateur service holds its head up high as some sort of technical demigod society, yet we cant even clean up our own camp. Arguments that transmitter standards interferes with technical development is a nonsense argument in my view. Its time that the ARRL lobbied the FCC for standards for amateur transmitters, and these standards should include keyclicks and SSB transmitter and amplifier IMD levels. We know keyclicks are unacceptable, why would it be so hard to specify by how much keyclicks should be suppressed by and what the maximum bandwidth should be? How does setting such standards interfere with technical development? We already have standards for harmonic and spurious levels. The FCC said a long time ago that we cant interfere with televisions or other services if our transmitters are crap. They set harmonic levels for transmitters. Its now time for them to say its also unacceptable for hams to interfere with hams using crap equipment. Its a disgrace that anyone can go buy a cheap 12 volt mobile radio and then go buy a cheap RM Italy amplifier and then get on the ham bands and call CQDX. Its equally sad that such operators think that they are legally entitled to do so without worrying about the consequences to others. Its selfish and not in the ham spirit. How is it fair that this kind of brain dead operation is classed as "technical experimenting" when it causes so much interference to others? Why the law stinks, is that if I decided to tune up on this individual for 1 hour I would be breaking the law because I am causing deliberate interference. Yet if I use a class C CB amplifier with a substandard transmitter it would be okay to cause interference all day and I am legal. We need to wake up to ourselves and our regulations. John ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
