[CW] American Morse Illegal on the Ham Bands?

[Chipn1ir at aol.com]

A: No.
 
 
73,
Chip W1YW
 
 
In a message dated 5/20/2013 4:30:50 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
k4kyv at charter.net writes:

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 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  sounded 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 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 to preclude 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 CW. 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 the subsequent Dayton FCC forum emceed by Johnston, he  revealed that the
Commission had pulled out an old Petition for Rulemaking  submitted by a ham
in Texas that had lain unacted-on 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 flooding the
Commission 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, 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 and  dismiss 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















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