John B.
Johnston W3BE
Q. Our club is instituting rules for visiting
operators at our club station. We want anyone who wants to “operate” to do so.
What are the FCC rules for this?
A. If you are looking
toward enabling a visitor to be your station control operator (SCO), there are two service rules: Firstly,
your visitor must be designated as your SCO by your club station license trustee. Read Section 97.103(b). Secondly, your visitor must be eligible to be your SCO under
Section 97.7, i.e., a person for whom an amateur operator/primary station license grant appears
on the ULS or who is authorized for alien reciprocal operation by Section 97.107. The SCO is the amateur operator designated by the licensee
of the station to be responsible for the transmissions from that station to assure compliance with the FCC Rules. Read Section 97.3(a)(13).
If, on the other hand, you are looking to enable non-
or under-licensed visitors to make use of the third party communication provisions in Section 97.115, there are special service rules for that. Your club station
is authorized to transmit messages for a third party to any station within the jurisdiction of the United States and to any
station within the jurisdiction of any foreign government whose administration has made arrangements with the United States to allow amateur stations to be used for transmitting
international communications on behalf of third parties.
Section 97.115(b), moreover, authorizes the third party to participate in stating the message where
the SCO is present at the control point and is continuously monitoring and supervising the third party's participation, and
the third party is not otherwise ineligible to participate in stating his or her third party message. This
participation activity is sometimes referred to unofficially within our amateur service community as operating
so as to indicate that the non- or under-qualified person is not the SCO.
Section 97.115(d) says that at the end of an exchange of international third party communications,
the station must also transmit in the station identification procedure the call sign of the station with which a third party
message was exchanged. As a courtesy, your SCO should first alert the foreign station operator that he
or she is engaging in third party communications. There may be unique regulations for such intercommunications
in that country.
In any event, your club station licensee is under no FCC obligation to make your club station
available to anyone except a FCC representative. Read Section 97.103(c). Your club should formulate
its policies for your club station. Then it should select for your club station license trustee a member
who will implement faithfully your club’s policy decisions.
Q. Who are the persons who are ineligible to be third party participants?
A.
They are prior amateur service licensees having compliance/licensing predicaments with our regulator.
Q. How can our club station SCO make that determination?
A. When your third party has an FCC-issued amateur operator/primary station grant showing on the
ULS, there obviously is no compliance/licensing issue. Otherwise,
the most convenient way may be to require the third party to sign for the station records this CYA statement (Read Section 97.115(b)):
I certify that I am not a prior amateur service licensee whose license was revoked or not renewed after hearing and
re-licensing has not taken place; suspended for less than the balance of the license term and the suspension is still in effect;
suspended for the balance of the license term and re-licensing has not taken place; or surrendered for cancellation following
notice of revocation, suspension or monetary forfeiture proceedings. I am not the subject of a cease and
desist order which relates to amateur service operation and which is still in effect.
Q. When a club member assumes the role of SCO, anyone should be able to operate at the SCO's discretion.
Anyone means anyone at all, licensed or not.
A. Not so fast.
Don’t forget that not everyone is eligible to be a third party message stating participant. Then
there is the matter of Section 97.103(b). It says the station licensee must designate the SCO.
So something more is involved here than just any club member doing some assuming. Section 97.115(b), moreover, says the third party may only
participate in stating the message.
Q. Is there any regulation requiring that we maintain the name or copy of the license of those who
speak over our club station under the auspices of the SCO?
A. No.
You may have in mind a former rule that required keeping a record of all third party message traffic sent and received.
There should, however, be a CYA record of the duty SCO because Section 97.103(b) says that the FCC will presume that the station licensee is also the SCO, unless
documentation to the contrary is in the station records.
Q. How much freedom our SCO gives a visitor is up to the SCO, but don’t the rules require
that the SCO be in a position to insure that the rules are complied with?
A.
Yes. Section 97.109 says the SCO must be at the control point and Section 97.105 says that the SCO must ensure the immediate
proper operation of the station.
Q. When a visitor who is a licensed ham wants to operate as the SCO, we need to see his license.
We need to record his information in the extremely remote chance that we are cited for some infraction while he or she is
operating. We should go online and check to see that the license is valid. We should also ask for some
ID to insure ourselves that our visitors are who they say they are.
A.
Your club station license trustee must establish that the person is whom he or she claims to be and is eligible to
be the SCO under Section 97.7, i.e., a person for whom an amateur operator/primary station license grant appears
on the ULS or who is authorized for alien reciprocal operation by Section 97.107. The only definite way to verify that a grant appears on the
ULS is to consult the ULS directly online.
To
confirm that the person is authorized for alien reciprocal operation by Section 97.107, it is much more complicated. Your trustee must determine
whether or not the person is a citizen of the United States. If so - even when the person also holds other
citizenship in other countries - he or she is ineligible for reciprocal operating authority in any place where the FCC regulates
communications.
Your trustee should consult the ULS to establish that the alien does not hold a FCC license grant. No
person holding an FCC amateur operator/primary station license grant is eligible for reciprocal operating authority.
Read Section 97.107.
Your trustee
should verify the alien’s license grant. There most likely may not be a consultable license data
base readily available. If not, the alien’s licensure document must be inspected. If
it is written in a language that your trustee does not comprehend, competent assistance must be obtained. Under
Section 97.107, it must have been issued by the alien’s government and there must be in
effect a multilateral or bilateral reciprocal operating arrangement, to which the United States and the alien's government
are parties, for amateur service operation on a reciprocal basis. Consult the FCC webpage Reciprocal Arrangements listing the countries with which the United States has such an arrangement.
The privileges granted to your reciprocal alien SCO under Section 97.107 are the terms of the agreement between the alien's government and the United
States; the operating terms and conditions granted by the alien's government; and the applicable rules in Part 97, but not to exceed the privileges of an FCC-granted Amateur Extra Class operator license.
Additionally,
Section 97.301 makes available frequency bands to a station having a SCO who holds a CEPT radio-amateur
license issued by a country belonging to the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations that has
adopted Recommendation T/R 61–01; and to an IARP (International Amateur Radio Permit) issued pursuant to the terms of
the Inter-American Convention on an International Amateur Radio Permit by a country signatory to that Convention, other than
the United States. Consult the FCC webpage Reciprocal Arrangements for listings of the applicable countries.
Q. A person operating our station without a club member present needs to be thoroughly checked out
on our station apparatus; only a club member would be able to check them out. However, my experience is that very few visitors
would be comfortable operating the station alone, unless it was set up for them, and they didn't have to retune the amp, change
antennas, lock up, etc. If the club member is comfortable with the person operating while he is not present, that is his choice,
but he needs to take responsibility for that decision. I suggest that we require a club member to sign the station log indicating
that they are taking responsibility for the visitor's operation while the member is not present.
A. Whoa! Such decisions are the exclusive responsibility of your club station
license trustee. Section 97.103 says it is the station licensee who is responsible for the proper operation of
the station - including designating the SCO. The station licensee is responsible for the proper operation
of the station in accordance with the FCC Rules. When the SCO is a different amateur operator than the station licensee, both
persons are equally responsible for proper operation of the station.
Q. When I permit visitors to operate our club station, I sit next to them as the SCO.
I figure that as long as I remained present and we operated within the limits of my license, the visitor didn't have
to have a license.
A. Your comment is further growing
evidence that our amateur service community’s support for Section 97.1(d) is losing traction. It says that one of principles for which
the rules in Part 97 are designed is the expansion of the existing reservoir within our amateur
radio service of trained operators, technicians, and electronics experts. Section 97.301, for instance, makes available certain frequency
bands to only those amateur stations whose SCO has an operator license grant of a certain class.
Q. Technical expertise is no longer associated with ham radio. Very few U.S.
hams construct or repair their apparatus anymore. They depend almost completely upon foreign-produced equipment.
Those exams are irrelevant to what we do. We are looking for amusement. We don’t
want to become trained operators, technicians, or electronics experts. We want more leeway.
We will skirt the rules if we have to. Your monitors don’t care.
A. Our amateur service rules, however, are our rules to observe unless
and until they are changed. Your comment has been added as Excuse
No. 42 in BE Informed No. 8 Collection of Excuses For Not Complying With Our Amateur Service Rules.
FYI: BE Informed No. 18 contains Arguments For Complying With The United States Code of Federal Regulations
Title 47 Part 97 Amateur Radio Services Rules.
Q. It having now been established that our administering VEs can be compliantly present in an examination
room from any distance with the assistance of audio/video apparatus, can the same A/V technology be applied to the station
control operator (SCO) overseeing a non- or under-licensed visitor’s third party message stating participation?
A. There does seem to be a direct corollary. Under the presupposition that the
administering VEs can comply with Section 97.509(c) by being present and observing the examinee from a distant location via A/V,
the control operator should be able to similarly comply with Section 97.115(b) by being present and continuously monitoring
and supervising the third party's participation from a distant location via A/V. Any abuse of this protocol
that resulted in a license being granted to an unqualified person would have a longer-lived consequence than would a few sporadic
illicit QSOs.
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September 3, 2011
Supersedes all prior editions