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When I became a ham back in the sixties the amateur bands were policed by the FCC themselves. They even had rolling vans with directional antennas. You even h
by rmason 6y ago
When I became a ham back in the sixties the amateur bands were policed by the FCC themselves. They even had rolling vans with directional antennas. You even had to go to the local FCC office to sit for the license test of all but the novice license. I still can remember the sound Morse code made in the room with glass on all four sides. They looked in at you and for a kid it was like being in a fish bowl.
But in a cost cutting move they handed over most of the monitoring of the ham bands over to volunteers organized by the ARRL. Testing was also turned over to volunteers and you no longer had to go to the local FCC offices.
As a result the FCC personnel lost contact with hams. This in my mind is the only reason that this letter could have been sent. If they have proof that these communications are taking place they should say so. Hams do a lot of volunteer work in their communities and it's like the federal government all of a sudden feels they are untrustworthy. This did not sit well at all with the hams I know in our local community.
- moftz 6y agoI think its mostly people with Baofengs operating on MURS and GRMS bands. The prepper and tactical larper forums all talk about how to setup a Baofeng for unlicensed use at these bands. I hope all hams out there do their best to help monitor our airwaves and report any abuse.
- syedkarim 6y agoThere should be bounties for logging/recording unauthorized use in amateur or licensed bands.
- rmason 6y agoIf it's unlicensed use then why blame the hams? Restrict sales of radios to only licensed hams. There is a precedent here. CB'ers used to buy ham radio amplifiers and use them illegally. The ham band of 10 meters was close enough to the CB 11 meter band it could be done with little change. So manufacturers at the behest of the FCC started removing 10 meters from linear amplifiers. If you showed proof of licensing you could get a plugin to add back the 10 meter band.
- moftz 6y agoI'd prefer if radios meant for ham usage just stuck to the ham bands. If you want to build your own to tx/rx across everything, go ahead. My Baofeng lets me tx on all kinds of frequencies that I'm not licensed for but my Yaesu properly locks me out from transmitting anywhere that isn't 2m ham or 70cm ham.