ARGUMENTS
For Complying With The
United States Code of Federal Regulations
Title 47 Part 97 Amateur Radio Services Rules
John B. Johnston W3BE

It is essential that you know and understand the rules for your station operation when it is a part of one of our amateur service communication systems. They are not regulated as such; they depend upon every station licensee and every control operator in the system to make certain that rule compliance is being achieved.

   Our system designers and administrators are responsible only to us.

   Here's another: The stakes have gone up. Forfeitures for violating our rules are running $7,000 to $10,000. One even hit $21,000. About one ham per year seems to figure out a way to spend some hard time behind bars. That should get your attention.

   You probably know what everyone is doing. Follow the FCC Enforcement Bureau's web site listing of recent enforcement actions to find out who got caught.

   Our hobby has long enjoyed an enviable reputation of being a legitimate, relatively untroubled, lightly regulated, radio service - wherein we can be counted on to participate in the rulemaking process and to comply with those rules. That has been one key to obtaining the vast privileges that we enjoy today.  That should appeal to your sense of what's good for the future of amateur radio.

   This last one, however, is my strongest argument: The immense value of the spectrum has caught the full attention of our Government and the entrepreneurs. Our hobby is facing its greatest challenge since television arrived in the late 1940s. The hams of that very disturbing era had to resolve the TVI monster or else. The public feared ham radio was a threat to their newly-found television viewing pleasures. Our families and neighbors even favored TV over ham radio. I suspect that if so many of those early telecasters had not been hams themselves, we wouldn't be here today.

   Now, we have an interference threat to us: Broadband over power lines. Its advocates claim that it will not cause us a problem because the BPL providers will comply with the radiation limits in Part 15. It was not good news when the FCC declared BPL-enabled Internet access service to be an information service. It did this to encourage its access to consumers.
   Here's a question that came in:

  "How about sending to the FCC recordings of BPL interference to our stations to prove how disruptive it is?" Here is my answer: That might be effective, but no guarantees from here. Your question, moreover, raises the scary thought that the BPL providers could turn the tables on us. They could send in recordings of some of our communications that are so frivolous as to make the convincing argument that our service does not warrant protection from anything.

   Don't let it be your station's transmission that loses our battle against BPL interference.

   For a fair and balanced list of reasons that have been given for not complying, see BE Informed No. 8 RAY DIO'S COLLECTION OF EXCUSES - A WIP collection of reasons for not complying with the amateur service rules as received here in the Rules and Regs Nerve Center (W3BE shack) where questions about the rules for the amateur service arrive 24 hours a day from around the World.

January 30, 2011
Supersedes all prior editions