[AMRadio] American Morse Illegal on the Ham Bands? or Johnny Johnston put in his Place

[Donald Chester]

At Dayton this past weekend, I visited the Morse Telegraph Club stall, and
an interesting subject came up, a rumour that the FCC had outlawed the use
of the American landline Morse Code on the amateur bands. Jim Wades, WB8SIW,
told me this was started by a retired FCC official who writes a monthly
column in a ham publication. The first name to come to mind was Riley
Hollingsworth, whose column appears in CQ magazine. Jim said no, it was not
Riley, but he couldn't think of the person's name. It immediately dawned on
me that it was probably Johnny Johnston, who wrote a monthly column in the
now defunct World Radio magazine. That jogged Jim's memory, and he said yes
indeed, that's who it was.

This smelled just like Johnston, who is apparently still trying to pull
punches and screw over certain classes of amateur operators he doesn't like,
even years after retiring from the FCC. John B. Johnston, now W3BE, was
chief of the amateur rulemaking division of the FCC for over 25 years,
starting in 1973, until he retired in 1998. During his quarter-century
watch, we saw a lot of damage inflicted on the amateur service via radical
changes in the FCC rules, even though some of the more outrageous docket
proposals raised so much opposition that they were dismissed.

My first introduction to Johnston was at the Dayton FCC forum circa 1974,
when he introduced the amateur community to Docket 20777, the infamous
"bandwidth" proposal that would have redefined sub-bands and permissible
emission modes in terms of signal bandwidth rather than emission type. The
official title of this proposal touted the word "Deregulation", but the
proposal was worded in such a way as to preclude the use of double sideband
AM on all phone bands below 28 MHz, as well as fast-scan TV in the 440 MHz
band. After the forum, a group of AM and FSTV enthusiasts tried to further
discuss the proposal with Johnston, but he quickly turned away and said he
didn't have time to talk about it because he had to leave to go to another
forum at a CB get-together.

It was Johnston who ushered in the 1983 revision to the amateur power limit,
defining legal power in terms of p.e.p. output. One of the side effects of
this change appears to theoretically reduce the legal power limit for AM
phone to about one-half the previous limit, while doubling the limit for
certain other modes, including RTTY, which Johnston had previously stated
was one of his preferred operating modes . Several individuals as well as
the ARRL submitted Petitions for Reconsideration, that would each have in
some way, grandfathered in the old AM power limit.

At a subsequent Dayton FCC forum emceed by Johnston while the power issue
was still pending final resolution, he revealed that the Commission had
pulled out an old Petition for Rulemaking submitted by a ham in Texas that
had lain unacted-upon for several years, and assigned it an RM-number,
asking the FCC to outlaw AM phone on the amateur bands. The subject of
Johnston's presentation that year was that the amateur community, with their
newly-acquired computer word processors, was wasting the Commission's time
by flooding them with frivolous rulemaking petitions.

He used as an example, the AM power issue. His line went something like
this: "Here, we have two petitions. One, submitted by an individual in Texas
who wants to eliminate AM altogether, while another, submitted by the ARRL,
seeks to CHANGE THE RULES to allow AMers to run TWICE AS MUCH POWER AS
EVERYBODY ELSE." Johnston's deceptive strategy was to imply that the FCC was
going to be even-handed in the matter when they dismissed both petitions.

Fortunately for American Morse enthusiasts, someone contacted the people
presently in charge at the FCC, and they essentially told him that Johnston
didn't know what he was talking about, and that American Morse was still
legal on the amateur bands, as long as the stations identify using the
regular International Morse Code.

For more on this story, go to:

http://www.kb6nu.com/american-morse-illegal-on-the-ham-bands/

http://www.kb6nu.com/more-on-american-morse-on-the-amateur-radio-bands/

Note: the individual in question is John B. Johnston, not Gary Johnston.



Don k4kyv