[CW] American Morse Illegal on the Ham Bands?

[Radio K0HB]

You can get a heart attack by mountain climbing over molehills.  Get on the
air and do it --- tell them it's a new data mode.  It's easier to get
forgiveness than to get permission.

73, Hans, K0HB
"Just a Boy and his Radio"


On Monday, May 20, 2013, Donald Chester wrote:

> 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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> =30=
>


-- 
73, de Hans, K0HB
"Just a boy and his radio"
--
Sea stories at --------> http://K0HB.wordpress.com
Superstition trails ---> http://OldSlowHans.com
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