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King Wants To Sell Out Ham Radio
An anonymous reader writes "Rep. Peter King (R-NY), Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has introduced HR 607, the 'Broadband for First Responders Act of 2011,' which has been referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee (which handles telecommunications legislation). The bill would create a nationwide Public Safety broadband network using the so-called 'D-Block' of spectrum in the 700 MHz range for Public Safety use. But to pay for it, he wants to sell off 420-440 MHz, currently heavily used by the military, satellites and Amateur Radio operators."
The point is - removing spectrum from them is a bad idea.
Basically - in emergencies, the ham bands already DO get used for emergency purposes. It's on a volunteer basis, but it's almost unheard of for non-emergency hams to fail to vacate a frequency in favor of emergency users.
If you take 70cm away from hams, the end result will likely be:
You gain the band for emergency use (wait, you already effectively had it!)
You lose a lot of frustrated hams - so not only do you effectively lose the other ham bands, you lose a bunch of trained radio operators with emergency experience (or at least emergency training)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I'm 26. I'm not old. Like any hobby there is a mix of old folks and young folks. Sadly us young folks are never heard about because we don't care about the politics and swap meets like the old timers do. We're also busy getting laid and whatnot, too.
To make matters worse, the part of the spectrum that jerk-ass is wanting to sell actually doesn't affect hams too much. 420 to 440 is used for TV and satellite downlinks in the amateur community, and is not used for repeaters or simplex operations. Repeaters and simplex are up between 440 and 450MHz. Us youngin's don't care about ATV whatsoever, and no matter who sells what the satellites will still keep transmitting on 438MHz like they always have.
While we don't care, we SHOULD care. If we let them sell this band off, they will think they can get away with selling, say, 2 meters. If we don't speak up and stop this now, there will be nothing to stop them from trying to sell off more and more of the spectrum, all for a few shiny pennies.
KD4PYR has a script that will generate a letter that you should print and send to your representative. It is located at http://www.kd4pyr.net/HamLetter.htm
I don't know how effective it would be, but, that is the process that we're supposed to go through to tell our representatives that we DO NOT WANT what they are doing. So, tell them.
It's not dying out any longer. We're heading toward having 700,000 U.S. hams due to the final elimination of the code test (you're welcome) and the fact that it's technically getting more fun due to software radio, etc. That's more than we've had in a very long time.
Bruce Perens.
Two quick points:
1) They're everywhere. There are over 600,000 licensed amateur radio operators in the US. If you live in the US, odds are, a ham lives or works less than half a mile from you.
2) A quick example of what they can do:
a) talk to people in the ISS
b) access email from nearly anywhere on the planet (no cell coverage? no problem!)
c) move information into and out of countries where infrastructure is not available or does not exist (Libya)
d) provide communications networks for very large events (marathons, etc)
e) tell emergency services to dig you out of your (mother's) hurricane-flattened house. (Ask the folks in New Orleans)
Hams are frequently very active in the public safety sphere. Don't mess with them.
Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
I think you mis-read that bill a little. Apparently, Rep. King wants to set aside spectrum in the 700 MHz range for Public Service emergency use. To make up for the loss of income from auctioning that spectrum, the spectrum in use by HAMs in the 400 MHz range would be auctioned off to commercial interests. So, we set aside some spectrum for first responders, but then sell spectrum already allocated to HAMs for commercial use. We are not taking the spectrum used by HAMs and giving that to the first responders - we are giving it instead to commercial interests.
Somehow, I smell a campaign contribution in all of this...
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
I am a "real professional" I work on an ambulance, I have an extensive background in search and rescue, and I'm a ham radio operator.
I have amazed the military, the local police forces, and the head of disaster services for our province with what I can do on ham radio, things they can't do on their multi-million dollar comm systems when they're working properly. In a disaster, when all the repeaters that are required for the fancy digital radios stop working, emergency services always come back to the hams.
Your truck is a good first step in emergency preparedness, but there's never a guarantee it will work as planned, or that it can get to where you need it, or that you won't need it in more than one location at the same time. One mobile repeater won't cover the site of a large scale disaster, and outside responding agencies may not even be able to use it.
The only "holier-than-thou I-know-everything" types are the ones who think they are infaliable and could never require any outside assistance. If you are truly involved in emergency services I suggest you go back to your most basic introductory class where they discuss knowing your limitations, operating within them, and not being afraid to call for help when you actually need it. This is part of every single course I have ever seen for every emergency service qualification, it's tragic that many people forget it, because it's simple stuff like that that costs lives, sometimes the victims, and often the responders.