Topband: ARRL Bandwidth petition

[Donald Chester]

>"The regulation of emission modes in Amateur Radio Service
>allocations is a limiting factor with respect to Amateur Radio
>experimentation," a synopsis of the petition concludes. "It leads to
>attempts to put new technology into a regulatory framework that was
>designed only to deal with older analog emissions." In order to
>implement digital technologies, an underlying assumption in the
>League's draft petition is to provide for an intermediate
>bandwidth--between what's needed for the legacy CW and phone
>modes--in the middle of certain bands."

I can see the rationale of reserving some space for narrow-band modes like 
CW and PSK-31, to protect against interference from wideband sources such as 
analog voice.  But if there is to be a segment defined at 3 kHz, what is the 
point of creating two segments, one to exclude voice and another to exclude 
RTTY-like digital modes?  Interference-wise isn't a 3-khz wide signal a 
3-khz wide signal regardless?  Would digital radiotelephony be considered 
voice or non-voice? Isn't this adding unnecessary complication to a subband 
structure that is already more complex than what exists anywhere else in the 
world, especially after licence class segmentation is factored in?

I am concerned about possible unintended consequences of this proposal.  For 
example, the status of AM phone is supposed to be specifically protected, 
but if the League proposal is adopted, instead of being expressly permitted 
by language embedded in the rules, AM would be protected by nothing more 
than a footnote.

I suggest that everyone interested in the future of amateur radio read the 
text of the proposal carefully, and try to come up with an informed opinion 
and transmit it to the website as requested.

Don K4KYV

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! 
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/