[Lowfer] No LF ham band in US

[John Davis]

For those on dialup connections who don't want to spend half the night
downloading the 1.1MB FCC Word file, there are links to the much shorter PDF
and text versions at www.lwca.org .

Just like newspapers do with obituaries of famous people, I had a page
announcing the *approval* of a 136kHz band hidden on the LWCA server, ready
to rename as the home page when the happy day finally arrived.  And talk
about your ironies!  Earlier this evening, I had just begun to scour the FCC
pages for any sign it might be ready to happen, when Lyle dropped the
bombshell.  And sure enough, tucked safely away in the daily digest, there
it was--NO ham band!

If it's such a dangerous thing to allow ham use where the PLC squatters have
taken up residence, it makes you wonder how the members of this list who
live in Europe ever stay on the air!  I mean, fire up the LF rig and the
whole south of Sweden, or all of Italy, or the Rhine Valley, or the greater
London area go dark???  Haven't heard about that yet on CNN, but by the
electric utilities' reason, it must be happening right and left.

What is that saying about American high technology?????

Or for that matter, what does it say about the American government's faith
in its radio amateurs?  Even Fidel Castro appears willing to let Cuban hams
on LF!  We may very literally be the last nation in the hemisphere to have
an LF ham band.

Although my main interest in IEEE is the Broadcast Technology Society, the
power transmission guys dominate our section meetings in this area.  Any
thoughts from the group on exactly what I should ask them at next week's
meeting while we're standing around gawking at the pretty displays in
Georgia Power's Distribution Control Center in Macon?

Harumph.

John D.