[Milsurplus] [BoatAnchors] A Cure for "The Silence of the Bands"

[don davis]

OK, that makes sense, even if our HF bands will get a bit raggedy around the
edges...  

My take on where we could go:  

1.  Get all the CB ops licensed and de-louse them a bit, 

2.  Put the rusting utility xmtrs and sw bc stations back on the air, and
tie their ops to shared services:  comm'l, ham repeater, sale of time to ham
radio ops, etc.

3.  Allow music, video, control, TLM on a big chunk of bandwidth (after all,
this is what every kid has in his cell phone)

4.  Subsidize repeaters and bandwidth for hard-to-get-service  areas and
conditions - "ham radio when the rest of the services are out to lunch",
drastically increase the bandwidth by many times what we now have (10 times
or 20 times?).  Must have PRB-1 type antenna freedom for appropriate
operations.  No antennas = no ham radio.  Coming soon to a covenant housing
tract near you...

5.  Make the operating habits and modes more extensive and more fun and more
"on-time"  (like DXCC for /MM for the 7 seas, and for moon bounce, mars
bounce, space repeaters, reserve some license "growth" to challenge the 10%
who would get bored and beginner license with a couple of steps (partially
tied to stations worked like some foreigners do) etc.,  Make licenses
lifetime with right of transfer to heirs.   

6.  Make ham radio more global - like what CQ magazine has done over past
year (short wave coverage, international ham news, 

I don't know how to do any of this, but I think you have to add features to
ham radio to match the needs and current operations they are now using.  I
would charge more money for all of this, since cell phone sign up is many
hundreds of $$ per year, maybe $99.00 / year could be a reasonable goal.
Maybe we keep  50 kHz of each HF band for legacy ham radio ("Classic coca
cola??).  Maybe a small tax deduction for passing down ham gear from one
licensee to another?

73 de don ad6pb

-----Original Message-----


It's called "CB." Yep- 11 Meters.  Like it or not, it's about the only
source of operators who aren't "buy a hand held, listen to dead repeater, go
play Facebook"
left from which to recruit.

73 DE Dave AB5S