[GreenKeys] (greenKeys) Indulgez Moi!

[George B. Hutchison]

GreenKeyers - - -

Those of you who have been around for ten years or more might recall the
teletype news broadcasts from WA9AHN and WC2XPF, which were the two licenses
granted for the experimental TTY broadcasts. We were assigned 6994 KHz and
13972 KHz.

These transmissions ran daily for about 21 months.

When the feds would not renew WC2XPF we finally shut down.

Enough infor mation and feedback was obtained during that period that a
Petition for Rule making was written and submitted to the FCC to establish a
new class of service on the HF bands

Here is a link to the file on hand at the FCC - - -.

http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/proceeding/view?z=ykzw3&name=RM-10765

The petition languished and I guess wandered around the FCC for perhaps six
months.

There were several members of congress and two or three senators who
according to some internal sources were interested in such a service..

Some calls were made to influential people and I guess the fan went to fast
speed and some poo was thrown in it, and the result was a letter to yours
truly from a Mr. Edmund Thomas, who at the time was the head of the Office
of Engineering and Technology.

Mr. Thomas' comments were such that I sincerely doubt he read any of the
petition, but simply regurgitated some of the comments that had come from
other sources. If you read the petition and then the letter from Mr. Thomas
you can pretty well tell he was not speaking referencing anything he had
read.

I think that the real reason the FCC wanted nothing to do with it was that
the petition was submitted at about the time that Michael Powell and his
band of cronies were beginning to extoll the wonders, the magic, and the
aura (and the stupidity) of BROADBAND OVER POWERLINE, or BPL, and how the
world was going to be a better place because of it.

A proposed new use of the HF spectrum as contrasted with Powell's Plainly 
Poor Powerline Propagation Plan would throw a big TILT in the field of 
politics.

For the Commission to consider ANYTHING that might be perceived as a monkey 
wrench or a couple of hundred pounds of C-4 near Mr. Powell's "baby" could 
only be labeled "unthinkable", and had to be quashed at any and all cost.

The ARRL was instrumental in the court action wherein the FCC was admonished
for numerous technical and procedural improprieties with regard to their
rulemakings and the haste and disregard they displayed for the comments and
findings of their own technical people.

And it was intriguing that the NTIA, who initially berated the BPL concept
as being essentially a danger to the spectrum, suddenly reversed their
position and extolled in their own language how glorious BPL would be.

My nephew, who at the time was still in the Navy assigned to the Space
Systems Command, had to attend several meetings at certain installations
surrounding the Gulf of Mexico wherein the topic was  "What  impact would
BPL have on the Navy's Low Frequency Over-The-Horizon Radar system that in
concert with the DEA was being employed to track the import of drugs from
South America.???" The Navy was NOT happy about BPL.

I would ask FCC types questions that essentially centered around "If BPL is
of no consequence technically, how close to any of the nineteen FCC
monitoring stations that are located around the US would BPL installations
be permitted?" or, "How close to the National Quiet Zones surrounding our
large Radio Telescope locations would BPL be allowed?"  NEVER got a straight
answer!!!

Regarding RM-10765, when the link below is tripped one will find the the 
title block that FCC Rules Sections 2 and 73 are affected by the petition. 
That is quite erroneous, as part 73 would not be affecteed at all. Indeed, 
languuage in the petition was written to establish a new part of the rules, 
Part 96.

The FCC rules in general are a template of how to write FCC rules in the 
language and sentence structure that they have throughout the entire rule 
collection. Inasmuch as Part 96 was unused at the time, I just wrote "Part 
96", and tried to make it look like they had done it.

You can read the entire petition if you go to the Search for Comments
RM-10765, and go to page 6 of the links, and you'll find my name at
 the bottom and the there are several parenthesized groups that look
 like the following:

View (25)  View (25)  View (24)  View (24)  View (25)  View (24)  View (25)
View (24)  View (24)  View (25)  View (25)

Each "view" is about 25 pages of the petition. As I recall there were about 
272 pages total.

http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/ecfs/proceeding/view?z=ykzw3&name=RM-10765

For a group as small and as diverse as is GreenKeys, there was a hell of a 
lot of positive commentary and feedback.

I am pleased to see that Dick Dillman of the  Maritime Historical Society 
has included comments on this topic of RTTY broadcasting..

A little side note here - - -

Dick - You might be interested to know that I was able to talk with the 
manager of KONP, our local radio station in Port Angeles.

I broached the subject of the possibility of the use of their current tower 
for a maritime coastal station after they complete their move to a standing 
two-tower array on the eastern side of PA. HE THOUGHT THAT WOULD BE A GOOD 
THING TO DO!!

The ground system is 65 years old and paved over, so may not be much more 
than some green dirt under a field of asphalt, but I know that removal of 
the tower would be a costly and hazardous undertaking due to the maze of 
power lines and guy cables that intertwine around the tower.

He also liked the thought of the Western Washington Historical Radio 
Society, Inc., as a means of getting petitions through the feds 
expeditiously.

So anyway, GreenKeyers, there you have a bit of the experience gained in 
this part of the country with regard to RTTY broadcasting.

Signals over the internet are nowhere as intriguing as the challenge of 
getting solid copy when all you can hear is white noise and maybe a couple 
of  bleeps now and then, but ITTY does give the machines something to do, 
and that's why it is there.

73,

George - W7TTY - ITTY Central