[TowerTalk] Dallas Morning News Rebuttal - Ham radios are not at fault.

[Brent Childers]

This rebuttal was posted today in the Dallas Morning News:

Ham radios are not at fault

    Fred E. Zimmerman's July 29 diatribe against ham radio operators and 
that mean old federal government contains some seriously inaccurate 
information on one hand and some scary viewpoints on another.

       His assertion that ham operators are not held responsible for any 
interference is simply untrue. We are required by Part 97 of the FCC 
regulations to meet specific standards of signal purity, etc., and
 when the interference is of our making, every amateur radio operator 
whom I'm aware of goes through significant lengths to resolve that 
problem.  What Mr. Zimmerman and others may not be aware of is that many 
consumer electronic devices are produced with inadequate radio frequency 
shielding, making them vulnerable to interference from various radio 
sources. Simply put, many manufacturers skimp on the shielding because 
it is cheaper to resolve the individual complaints from the few who get 
interfered with.

 Additionally, several surveys of interference have been conducted and 
always point to the other sources such as business radios, CB radios, 
etc., as the vast majority of interference sources, but the public is 
still convinced that if that ham antenna goes up, it must be what's 
causing the interference with my soap operas! It is a standing joke in 
the ham radio community to put up an antenna but not connect it for 
several weeks and listen to the parade of accusations that we're 
interfering - with something that isn't even connected!

 But what is scary is Mr. Zimmerman's desire to prohibit antennas 
because he considers them "ugly." If he has no interest in radio, 
perhaps he does feel that way, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder 
and I don't feel we have the right to control our neighbors' properties 
on the basis of our personal taste.

 Perhaps Mr. Zimmerman has a short memory, but in the minutes following 
the disastrous tornado that hit DeSoto and Lancaster in 1994, the call 
went out to ham radio operators to come provide the
 communications for those cities. Fire and police radio systems were 
down, cell and wire phones were down, and into that communications void 
stepped ham radio operators with equipment they paid for, skills they 
had developed and vacation time away from their jobs. I know - I was one 
of them.

 This is why the FCC does not permit people like Mr. Zimmerman to force 
ham radio operators to take down their antennas because they're "ugly."

 RICK ELLIS, Glenn Heights

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