[Fists] WRC-03 - Morse code

[Nancy WZ8C]

The IARU Web site is  http://www.iaru.org/

For immediate release

New Regulations For The Amateur Services
By Michael Owen, VK3KI

WRC-03 IARU Observer Team Member

Introduction

On 4th July 2003 the World Radiocommunication Conference, Geneva, 2003
ended and on the following day, the 5th July 2003 the new international
regulations governing the amateur and amateur satellite services, Article
25 of the Radio Regulations, that had been adopted by the Conference come
into effect.


Morse Code

The old regulation that Morse was a requirement for the operators of
amateur stations below 30 MHz was found in a provision that read as follows:
Any person seeking a licence to operate the apparatus of an amateur station
shall prove that he is able to send correctly by hand and to receive
correctly by ear texts in Morse code signals. The administrations concerned
may, however, waive this requirement in the case of stations making use
exclusively of frequencies above 30 MHz.

That was replaced with a provision giving each administration the right to
decide whether or not Morse is a required qualification as follows:

25.5 Administrations shall determine whether or not a person seeking a
licence to operate an amateur station shall demonstrate the ability to send
and receive texts in Morse code signals.

The alternative of simply deleting the old provision was rejected because a
number of administrations thought that the matter was so important that a
positive decision not to require Morse as a qualification was appropriate.
The effect is actually the same: Morse code is no longer an internationally
required qualification for an amateur licence, though an administration may
still require it.

The Qualification of Amateurs

Apart from the Morse code as a qualification, the previous regulation
provided:
Administrations shall take such measures as they judge necessary to verify
the operational and technical qualifications of any person wishing to
operate the apparatus of an amateur station.

This was replaced by a new provision as follows:

25.6 Administrations shall verify the operational and technical
qualifications of any person wishing to operate an amateur station.
Guidance for standards of competence may be found in the most recent
version of Recommendation ITU-R M.1544.

The reference to the Recommendation is a non-mandatory reference. That is,
an administration is not bound to follow it, but it is expected that all
administrations will take the Recommendation into account when setting the
qualification for an amateur licensee.

The Recommendation is very general, for example providing that any person
seeking a license to operate an amateur station should demonstrate a
"theoretical knowledge of: Radio regulations, international, domestic", and
under the heading "Radio system theory", "transmitters, receivers, antennas
and propagation and measurements." Consistently with the decisions of the
Conference, the Recommendation does not suggest any requirement for a Morse
skill.

That accords with the IARU position that the Radio Regulations should give
some guidance as to the qualification appropriate for an amateur licence,
but should not attempt to set a syllabus, as the diversity of environments
for which a standard must be set is very great.

The identification of a standard, the topics on which knowledge is
required, reflects one of the essential elements of the amateur service,
namely that an amateur is a person who has demonstrated an operational and
technical qualification, distinguishing that amateur from many other users
of the spectrum.