It's been a couple of days since the FCC posted their "Report and Order" to changes to the rules of Part 97, the rules which govern Amateur Radio. The thing which sticks out in my mind the most is the increase of the phone band size on both 80 and 40 Meters. It was a sizeable increase; and a lot more expected on 80 Meters than was asked for by the ARRL.
Why would the FCC be so generous with the allocation? I'm thinking it might just be related to another matter before the FCC - one in which they haven't acted upon yet. That would be the much awaited decision regarding the fate of the 5 WPM Morse Code requirement to gain access to HF radio operating privileges.
Imagine the FCC declares that it is no longer necessary to know Morse Code in order to operate on the HF bands. Can you imagine all the Novice and Technician licensees who would instantly be eligible to get on the HF bands and operate? Where are you going to put them all? And you can imagine how many "wanna be" Hams would now be able to get on HF now that they would no longer be "burdened" (my sarcasm) by having to learn Morse code and pass a proficiency test?
I fear the FCC is clearing the forest and is making pasture for the inevitable increase of activity that would occur on the phone bands when and if they eliminate the 5 WPM code requirement. Unfortunately, that is going to put the squeeze on us CW ops. Even though CW is allowed on any part of the Ham bands, there are defacto "CW only" havens that will become smaller and smaller.
Of course, this is all speculation; but sometimes it doesn't take a prognosticator to see the future.
73 de Larry W2LJ
Here's to holing out hope that if it does happen the tech and novice classes will surprise us all. I know plenty of tech class users who are just as professional as anyone else.
ReplyDeleteYou might be right. I'm just really getting into CW, and it'll change things. Oh well
ReplyDeleteLarry, I'm puzzled by the huge increase in SSB for 75M. I don't think they had to go that far at all. I wonder if it's the little CW activity on 80 other than nets? In the end, it's almost as wide for CW as 40M but just seems like a big big increase for SSB on 75. I know our qrp net on 3686.4 will likely have to move, altho we might try it to see what happens. On 40M, we might find that QRP works best up there with the SKCC folks around 7118, in other words between the AM stations. Probably would be better than fighting the RTTY on 7.040 or even 7.030. I heard RTTY on 7.026 this evening. Oh well..... W4QO
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