[KYHAM] Yet another chance to state YOUR Views...

[Ron Dodson]

Yet another chance to state YOUR Views...

Ron

ARLB005 FCC invites petition comments

The FCC is seeking comments on four Amateur Radio rule
making
petitions filed recently and put on public notice this week.

Comments are due by February 7, 2002, in petitions seeking
to
legally separate wideband and narrowband modes on 160
meters, allow
hams to bequeath their call signs ''in memoriam'' to a
specific club,
expand HF operating privileges for Novice and Tech Plus
operators,
and permit retransmission on amateur frequencies of NASA
manned
spacecraft communications.

A proposal from veteran Top Band operators and contesters
Bill
Tippett, W4ZV, and Jeff Briggs, K1ZM, asks the FCC to
subdivide 160
meters into mode-specific subbands. The petition, submitted
to the
FCC in September, has been designated as RM-10352. Tippett
and
Briggs contend that the ARRL band plan for 160
meters--modified last
year after lengthy consideration by the ad hoc ARRL
160-Meter Band
Plan Committee on which both men sat--does not go far enough
and is
unenforceable. They want the FCC to prohibit SSB, AM and
other
wideband modes below 1.843 MHz, as the ARRL band plan
recommends.

Tippett and Briggs said that while the topic of their
petition did
arise during the ARRL committee's deliberations, their
petition is
an independent effort with no connection to the committee or
the
ARRL.

The Quarter Century Wireless Association has asked the FCC
to change
its amateur vanity call sign system rules to permit
individual
amateurs to, in effect, will a call sign to a designated
club as an
''in memoriam'' call sign. The FCC has designated the
petition,
submitted in December, as RM-10353. The QCWA notes that the
current
vanity rule ''excludes current licensees from speaking for
themselves'' while they're still alive and ''requires their
relatives
to speak for them post mortem.''

Novice licensee John S. Rippey, W3ULS, has petitioned the
FCC to
expand HF phone and CW privileges for Novice operators. The
FCC has
designated the petition, submitted in December, as RM-10354.
Rippey
held a General ticket in the 1950s and 1960s and obtained
his former
call sign after relicensing as a Novice in 1999. Rippey has
asked
the FCC to grant Novice and Technician (with Element 1
credit)
licensees new or expanded operating privileges on 80, 40,
30, 17,
15, 12 and 10 meters. His suggestions include SSB privileges
for
Novices and Tech Plus licensees on 17 and 12 meters.

The NASA John H. Glenn Research Center Amateur Radio Club is
seeking
a modification in wording to the Part 97 rule that already
permits
amateur retransmission of NASA manned shuttle
communications. The
petition has been designated as RM-10355. The club wants the
Amateur
Service rule, Sec 97.113(e), to include International Space
Station
communications as well as any manned spacecraft in the
future.

Interested parties may comment on any or all of these
petitions via
the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System,
http://www.fcc.gov/e-file/ecfs.html