[Lowfer] CORRECTION regarding 2E0ILY-N1BUG QSO

[JD]

No correction is necessary, Paul.  You stated accurately in your first
post that yours was an amateur-to-amateur QSO.

Regardless of the views of any Scottish MAL-content or others on the
euroflector, just any license is NOT automatically a license to
communicate in the Amateur Radio Service. The US Experimental Radio
Service license is a very different matter from a CEPT Experimenter's
License (not a formal ITU nomenclature, AFAIK, but a regionally defined
entry-level deal--an opportunity that ARRL has managed to overlook in
their rush to degrade Technician class into something even less than they
already have). A Part 5 license is _not_ a ham ticket, junior, "lite," or
otherwise, and a Part 5 station is not normally authorized to communicate
with anyone other than another ERS licensee. It's a major feat to justify
such to the FCC.

Remember the good old days when we had publications of record and didn't
have to depend on the collective "wisdumb of the net" to remember things
for us? ;P I used to write for one of those, and don't recall anyone
receiving special authorization to communicate with stations outside US
jurisdiction, amateur or otherwise. There were plenty of reception reports
each way involving Part 5 ops, and those wily Canadian hams managed T/A
QSOs, some of which were coordinated a bit controversially; but there were
no formal international in-band QSOs with one end in the US.  It was
widely understood that would have to wait until the band was allocated to
amateur radio here, and truth be told, I was surprised that so much time
elapsed before someone got around to trying it.

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, given that I did predict during
rulemaking that 630 m would receive most of the initial attention--but
even the most stalwart American pioneers of 136 kHz seemed to abandon the
band for a time. I'm delighted to see interest reviving there, and FWIW, I
consider yours and Chris' accomplishment to be legitimate exactly as you
stated it!

73
John