[RTTY] ARRL Board Meeting - Approved modified HF band plan changes

[Peter Laws]

On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 9:07 AM, Ben Antanaitis - WB2RHM
<wb2rhm at wb2rhm.com> wrote:
> FYI......
>
> http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-board-approves-dues-hike-hf-band-plan-2016-national-parks-centennial-event
>
> Don't see a motion to withdraw RM-11708 though.


I'm not sure if the fiddling with the band edges is intended as
appeasement or not.  Moving the phone/CW-Data line in the 80-m band
was a mistake and I see they are trying to get that reversed.

The upgrading of Technicians continues -- without forcing them to take
a watered-down General test!  Adding digital privileges where they
already have CW.  Rather than have ARRL encourage the FCC to change
the rules, why don't Technicians who want data privileges other than
on 10 m just take the damn test?  Our next regular session is two
weeks tomorrow.  Spend 1 hour each day between now and then reading
over the question pool and you can get 'phone privileges in addition
to data.  What's worse is that the FCC will screw up whatever license
changes ARRL lobbies for.

Technician Pluses (at that time, plus the 49 remaining Novices) got
upgraded in 2004 (WT Docket 04-140) when the old Novice sub-bands on
80/40/15/10m (that Tech Pluses had access to) got expanded to match
the General CW subbands.  No additional testing.  04-140 also included
the Kenwood Amendment that made their SkyCommand system legal.

All Technicians got upgraded again in 2007 when Element 1 was removed
from all license classes meaning that Technicians immediately got
upgraded to Technician Plus (though the FCC simply lumped all Techs
and Tech Pluses into Tech).  No additional testing.

Now the ARRL wants the FCC to upgrade Techs again by adding data modes
to that expanded HF CW spectrum again with no additional testing.

What is the point of having different classes of licenses if we simply
keep moving privileges down into what is supposed to be the
entry-level class?  And lets not forget the quality of the test
questions.  See if you can answer these questions.  I've obscured the
correct answer:



T1A02 (X) [97.1]
Which agency regulates and enforces the rules for the Amateur Radio
Service in the United States?
A. FEMA
B. The ITU
C. The FCC
D. Homeland Security

T1C01 (X) [97.3(a)(11)(iii)]
Which type of call sign has a single letter in both its prefix and suffix?
A. Vanity
B. Sequential
C. Special event
D. In-memoriam


I wish I had the test element Q&A pools from when I took the tests in
1991 in electronic form so that I could compare them.  I don't
remember questions this hard ...



-- 
Peter Laws | N5UWY | plaws plaws net | Travel by Train!