[CW] Digital Baud Rate on HF, ARRL Proposal Bears Watching

[Donald Chester]

The link I sent,  to the September QST editorial as posted on the ARRL web
site is:


http://www.arrl.org/files/file/QST/This%20Month%20in%20QST/September%202013/
ItSeemsToUs.pdf


It should be one single line. For some reason, the e-mail program wants to
create a line break  after the "20213/" and cuts off the "it seems to us"
part. The result is you  get an error message. Let's try again, and if it
doesn't work this time, try manually copying and pasting the entire URL as
one single line directly into your browser, without any added spaces or
breaks.

I hate it when the e-mail program or word processor tries to  rewrite your
document for you.

I was forwarded additional information that makes it appear there is more to
this than meets the eye. The Sumner editorial was the first inkling I had
heard of it. This indeed does suggest a back-door two-step or maybe
three-step approach to slipping through the defunct original bandwidth
petition. Private correspondence between a ham who says he's not sure if the
Sumner proposal is a good thing or a bad thing for amateur radio, and a
couple of folks at the League, indicate that the ARRL people are well aware
of the overwhelming opposition to the bandwidth petition, and that this
latest proposal may likewise generate strong opposition within the amateur
community, but they have decided to proceed with it anyway, saying that
members of the amateur community can "express their displeasure directly via
their comments to the FCC". They appear to be rushing this through without
further discussion in QST or giving members the time and opportunity to
correspond and discuss it with their regional Directors before any petition
is formulated and submitted. I need to go back and study this some more,
before making further specific comments, to make sure I am getting all my
facts correct.
 
One thing that could come out of this, to the League's chagrin, might be the
elimination of mode subbands altogether, as happened in Canada and most
other nations of the world. If our narrow-mode subbands, AKA the "CW bands",
are to allow 2.8 kHz wide digital hash, using exactly the same amount of
band space as a standard SSB signal, what's the point of even having
subbands in the first place? Digital hash right in the middle of the CW band
can generate far more interference than would a regular SSB signal, and it
is worth pointing out  that the editorial makes specific mention that
"Amateurs have developed a wide variety of digital data modes that make
efficient use of the bandwidth of a typical SSB transceiver".

Don k4kyv