[RTTY] ARRL attack on current RTTY users

[Kok Chen]

On Nov 21, 2013, at 8:40 PM, Jeff Blaine wrote:

> So I'm not quite
> sure how this group can actually be said to represent the voice of the ham community.

Be that as it may, I don't think that by itself that argument will sway the FCC commissioners one way or the other.  None of the commissioners are hams, much less have ever encountered the interference between disparate digital modes (including CW).  The only ham they will likely to encounter in the entire process is ARRL's paid counsel.

All the FCC Commissioners have is the ARRL proposal in front of them, and it is up to us, as individuals (and not lawyers), to argue *why* the RM as proposed by the ARRL is not in the interest of amateur radio.  

Please remember that the petition is not about email, or LID sailors, or whether Pactor is legal because of Part 97.309.  It is about the removal of symbol rate (a.k.a. baud rate) limitation from Part 97.307.  The closer we focus on addressing that, the more likely our primary arguments won't get lost among other arguments that are not pertinent to lawyers.

It might help when sending in comments to the RM to include your experience with digital modes.  It won't hurt if you have used it before some of the wide bandwidth proponents were even born :-).

I also think that it will help if we were to point out unintended consequences of removing the symbol rate limit in 97.307.  We have the advantage that the only advise they got when drafting their petition are probably the proponents of removing symbol rate limitations.  They probably had no devil's advocate or even advice from someone who has used keyboard digital modes very much.

73
Chen, W7AY