Anyone who has listened to broadcast radio knows at least a little about station identification requirements; I certainly remember listening to the Indy 500 coverage back in my youth (I grew up in Indianapolis, so we were blacked out for TV coverage and could only listen to the race on the radio) and remember well the periodic interruption of the coverage with "We now pause 15 seconds for station identification" followed by WIBC's identification as the network flagship station.  The general rule is that radio stations must, from time to time, transmit identification so that listeners will know who is transmitting.  The main regulatory reason for this is so that a station that is suffering harmful interference from another station can, merely by listening long enough, identify who that station is and seek relief appropriately, or determine that they are not entitled to relief.  Amateur radio stations are no exception to this general rule, although the specific requirements are different than for the broadcast services.

The general rule for identification in the amateur radio service in the United States (§97.119) is that station identification is required at the end of a transmission or series of transmissions, and at least once every ten minutes during a transmission or series of transmissions which lasts longer than ten minutes.  Note that there is no requirement to identify at the start of a series of transmissions, and identification at the start of a series of transmissions is insufficient to meet the requirements of the rule.  In general, the best way to remain in compliance with the rules is to ensure that you always end out your transmission with your identification. 

In general, transmissions which do not include identification (known as "unidentified communications or signals") are prohibited, with two very specific exceptions.  First, stations operating more than 50 kilometers above the earth's surface ("space stations") are not required to identify under any circumstance.  Second, stations being used solely to control a model craft (via telecommand) are not required to identify provided that the transmitter being used has a label affixed to it identifying the licensee's call sign, name, and address, and that the transmitter's power does not exceed one watt.  Note that while telecommand signals sent to a space station are permitted to be encrypted, such transmissions are not exempt from identification.  The only type of transmission which is both exempt from identification and permitted to be encrypted is telecommand of a model craft under §97.218.

The identification itself must be a call sign.  In general, it'll be the call sign of the operator, but there are several situations in which it can be a different call sign.  In general, when operating someone else's station you are supposed to use their call sign, not your own call sign.  When operating a station owned by, or being operated on behalf of, a club, the operator should identify using the club's call sign.  Also, a station which is operating within the scope of a "special event" may identify using the temporarily assigned special event call sign in lieu of his or her own call sign.  In all of these cases, the operator must have the permission of the station owner, the club's trustee or the special event coordinator (respectively) in order to use the call sign.  Furthermore, when using a temporarily-issued special event call sign the operator must identify with his or her own call sign at least once in every hour; however, this is not required when using someone else's permanently-issued station or club call sign. 

The rules stipulate that station identifications must be transmitted in one of four formats: Morse code, phone (in English), RTTY, or a video format as specified in §73.682(a) (which is part of the FCC's standards for broadcast video); the latter two options apply only if the transmission being identified was in a digital mode or video mode, respectively.  In practice, very few stations transmitting digital modes other than RTTY identify in RTTY, identifying instead in the same mode as the transmission, and the FCC has yet to take action against any station for failing to identify, but that's what the rules require.  (The regulations relating to digital modes are rather out of date in places, and actual practice is often rather at odds with the regulations, but nobody seems to care a whole lot.)

There's a lot of common myths in the amateur community relating to identification.  A common one that is seen with older VHF ragchewers is the practice of identifying in a roundtable with "K9XYZ and the group, this is W9ZXY", and some hams seem to think that this practice is mandatory.  The regulations never mandate transmitting the call sign of any station other than that the station transmitting.  It is not necessary (in regulation, at least) to identify the intended recipient of the transmission.  This particular practice seems to have arisen from an overly zealous interpretation of the regulations relating to broadcasting; someone decided that all communications had to involve exactly two stations, and that identifying in this manner would somehow satisfy this regulation.  The only requirements for two (or more) stations who are communicating with one another is that each station must end its final transmission in the exchange with its own call sign, and each station must identify with its own call sign at least once every ten minutes during the sequence of communications.

There's a few situations in which one is required to add indicators either before or after one's call sign, when identifying.  If you're operating someone else's station and you are exceeding the privileges alloted to the licensee of that station, you are required to identify by using the station owner's call sign followed by your own call sign, to explain why that station is entitled to operate in those frequencies or modes.  There's also three special suffix indicators (/KT, /AG, and /AE) used to indicate that the station operator has recently upgraded and is using the privileges gained thereby pending the processing of the upgrade by the FCC.  These are pretty rare now, though, given the speed with which the FCC processes upgrades these days.  Also, when operating in the United States pursuant to a reciprocity grant, the alien operator is required to prefix his or her own (non-US) call sign with a call sign prefix identifying the location of the station.  Perversely, for Canadians this goes after, not before, the call sign.  (The same rule applies for a US licensee operating in another country, except, of course, in reverse.)  Licensees may add additional voluntary designations either before or after their call sign if they so choose, as long as such designations do not conflict with any of the official ones.  It's quite common to see "/R" added to repeater station identifications, for example, even though this is (no longer) required by the rules, and many older hams will reflexively add "mobile" to their identification when operating mobile because that used to be required.  The requirement of not conflicting with official designations effectively eliminates most voluntary prefix options because nearly every possible code is a valid national prefix and would therefore be in conflict.  (Out of 1296 possible two-character codes, 1034 are currently assigned.)  However, voluntary suffix options are pretty much wide open.

Speaking of myths regarding identification, the NCVEC perpetuates the myth that the "KT", "AG", and "AE" suffixes are initialisms in question T2B11, which tests whether you know that "AG" supposedly means "Authorized General".  The regulations do not specify the use of "Authorized General" when identifying in English when operating pursuant to a CSCE granting General privileges; they specify the specific use of the suffix "AG", which in phone would be "Alpha Golf".  The reason "KT" is used for Technicians instead of "AT" (which would make more sense) is because "AT" is not a call sign prefix available to the FCC (it's allocated to India) and the FCC, when it selected those suffixes, wished to avoid conflict with other possible uses.  "Authorized General" is essentially a backronym from the fundamentally meaningless code.  (T2B11 is another example of a bad question; fortunately, this one, like the other bad question I wrote about a while ago, appears to have been dropped from the 2010 version of the pool.)

This post has been brought to you by pool questions T2A05, T2B01, T2B02, T2B03, T2B04, T2B05, T2B06, T2B07, T2B08, T2B09, T2B10, and T2B11.  Section references above are to Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations, browsable via the GPO Access eCFR service.

A while back I was watching some TV show, quite likely a documentary of some sort, that talked about the American effort to land a man on the moon in the 1960s, and more specifically how that goal became a major driver in the American economy during the 1960s.  That concentration of effort is no doubt a huge part of why America was the global leader in technological innovation up to the turn of the century.  The Apollo program wasn't all that expensive.  The government spent, over ten years, between $20 and $25 billion in 1969 dollars (around $150 billion in today's dollars) on the Apollo program, and the government recovered all of that within less than a decade due to increased tax revenues related to the subsequent commercial exploitation of the technologies developed by the space program.

It does rather seem that a major space mission is a good economic driver as well as a very potent way to build national pride in a nondestructive way (we get to win without anyone else really losing).  The problem is that we've already been to the moon; doing it again isn't very interesting unless we establish a permanent base these.  The next obvious targets are Mars and Venus; Venus is closer but the surface is too hot for even a mechanized lander to last long, and a manned mission would have no chance of setting foot on Venusian soil with present materials technologies.  So that leaves Mars as the obvious choice for the next place to send a manned mission, and so when this topic comes up (as it did recently in connection with the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 11) that's what is usually proposed.

There are two main difficulties in a mission to Mars: getting there, and getting back.  And it's not the astrophysics that are difficult: we know how to do that by now.  It's the biosphere management required to keep some number of humans alive (that is provided with air, water, and food) for the entirety of that trip, which will take  months.  The missions to the moon were short, only a couple of days, and it was practical for the astronauts to take their consumable supplies with them and to jettison their waste as they went.  A Mars mission has no such option; if they tried to pack a year's worth of air, food, and water in the ship it would take years just to boost it all into earth orbit for assembly.  To have any hope of being launched in a reasonable time, a Mars mission will have to construct a closed biosphere capable of sustaining the crew, with only sunlight as an external input, for the entirety of its mission; they will have to recycle virtually everything on board and very carefully manage their limited resources. 

Now, doesn't that sound like it should be right up the Green Party's alley?  The need for the technologies required to build a self-sustained closed biosphere capable of supporting a crew of several humans for a year would naturally drive research into all sorts of areas that have immediate and obvious application to waste management and reprocessing, resource recovery, and other aspects of environment management that are just the thing for advancing technologies in ways to pollute our own planet less and place fewer demands on its limited natural resources.  I would think that Greens would be the loudest advocates for a manned mission to Mars because of this, yet the word "Mars" does not even appear in their 2004 platform statement, and in fact the Greens appear to oppose manned exploration of space due to the "high cost and risk for human life".  I suppose they haven't really thought about this that much.

It seems clear to me that a Mars mission could lead to a technological Renaissance in the life sciences the way that the Apollo missions did in the material sciences and in electronics, with huge benefits to all mankind and especially to whatever nation does it first.  But we won't know unless we try.

Came across a job posting today on sologig for a SharePoint Analyst that had one of the oddest job requirements I've seen yet.  Apparently this employer believes that a qualified candidate will be able to "[p]repare strategic business requirements, uses accepted concepts, standards, SDLC methodologies, and toilets".

Now, I would think that applicants for most jobs in the United States would generally be expected to be toilet-trained, and in any case not being toilet-trained would probably fall within the scope of a protected disability under the ADA.  Maybe one of the duties includes maintaining the programmer's restroom.

Original listing here; saved for posterity here for when the posting expires or is "corrected".

I wrote a while back about some of the things you cannot do on amateur radio.  Here's some more of them.

First of all, amateurs are forbidden from broadcasting: that is, amateurs are prohibited from making transmissions of content transmitted with the intention that it be heard by the general public, either directly or indirectly.  That doesn't mean that hams aren't allowed to make one-way transmissions, it just means that an amateur may not use his or her amateur station, in general, to talk to people who aren't also amateurs.  It's important to understand that certain one-way transmissions such as a CQ call, QST bulletin, or telemetry transmission are not "broadcasts" because they are not intended to be heard by the general public, but instead by "all amateurs" or "amateurs with an interest in this communication".  The key to the definition of "broadcasting", which is entirely prohibited to the amateur service, is that the communications must be intended to be received by the general public.  Obviously this regulation is to prevent amateur stations (with their zero license fee) from competing with the broadcast service.  If your interest in radio is to be a talk radio star, then amateur radio might not be you, and you should consider looking elsewhere.

Similarly, the transmission of music is also prohibited (with one exception: music incidental to an authorized retransmission of communications from the Space Shuttle is permitted).  However, there is reportedly a ruling that one ham singing "Happy Birthday" on the air to another ham does not count as the "transmission of music", presumably because most hams seem to be unable to sing.  Again, this is a noncompete regulation; if you want to transmit music the FCC wants you to use the broadcast service or a low power service to accomplish your purpose, not amateur radio.  If your interest in radio is to be an on-air DJ, again, amateur radio might not be for you, and you should consider looking elsewhere.

The use of codes, ciphers, encryption, or any other method for concealing meaning is prohibited, with two exceptions that are very similar in nature.  A station may use encrypted transmissions for the telecommand of an amateur space station (that is, an amateur station more than 50 kilometers above the earth's service; typically, a satellite, either manned or unmanned), or for the remote control of a model craft (such as a model airplane, boat, or car).  In the satellite station case, the FCC mandates that all satellite stations be able to be "remote killed" from the ground, and in any case a malicious operator could easily pervert a satellite's operation by tweaking its control parameters to the point that it could not be recovered.  Given the high expense of putting satellites in orbit, and the extreme difficulty in servicing them once they're there, the FCC lets us protect those stations in this way.  The same permission is granted for remote control craft for much the same reason; also, telecommand stations for remote control of model craft are subject to power limitations (one watt) that make it unlikely that the remote control transmissions will create difficulties for other stations, and to physical identification requirements that will allow identification of the station operator in the unlikely event that there is unacceptable interference.

Amateurs may not send "false or deceptive signals".  This mainly means that amateurs may not use fictitious identification to try to appear to be someone they are not, or to try to get someone else in trouble.  It also means that, e.g., false calls of distress are bad (but we've already covered that). 

Amateurs may not use indecent or obscene language on the air.  This one is probably one of the most violated rules on the bands, sad to say: there's quite a lot of indecent and no small quantity of obscene language on the HF bands (75 meters is especially notorious for this) as well as on VHF and UHF repeaters in many areas.  What exactly is meant by "indecent" and "obscene" is complicated, and it's probably best to play on the safe side here, not so much for the sake of not violating the rules, but simply out of respect for not only your fellow amateurs (who may well be very much not like you) but also anyone else who might be listening in.  Remember that kids, and even entire classrooms, listen to this stuff sometimes, and your name and address are published by the FCC so (unless you've been making "false or deceptive signals") anyone who does hear you swearing on the air will be able to find out exactly where you live.  And that might prove to be embarrassing. 

This post has been brought to you by pool questions T2A01, T2A02, T2A03, T2A04, T2A06, T2A07, and T2A08.

As the casual reader of this blog has no doubt noted, I have been blogging about the question pools used for the amateur radio examinations in the United States, focusing (so far) on the Technician exam.  The NCVEC just announced the 2010 edition of that pool, and I'm going to have to take a look at it soon and comment on it the way I did on the 2008 Extra pool when it was released.  However, I want to grouse about a particular question on the old pool first, and I'm going to continue to blog about the old pool for now because that's what people will be testing against until July, at least.

Question T1D08 asks: "What is your responsibility as a station licensee?" and gives (like all other questions on these tests) four choices.  Now, of course, amateurs have many responsibilities as station licensees, many (but not all) of which are set out explicitly in the various regulations in Part 97 and elsewhere in Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations.  Hams are, obviously, required to follow those regulations; this is so blindingly obvious that it almost should go without saying.  Which is, I suppose, why the correct answer to this question is "Your station must be operated in accordance with the FCC rules".  There is really no excuse for getting this one wrong.

It is worth noting, however, that the other three options for this question are not only wrong, but relatively obviously wrong.  "You must allow another amateur to operate your station upon request" is nearly the exact opposite of the real rule, which is that you are never required to let anyone use your station and are responsible for any transmissions by anyone you do let use it.  "You must be present whenever the station is operated" is simply not true; there are many situations in which you may be absent from the station or its control point while the station is being operate.  And the third, "You must notify the FCC if another amateur acts as the control operator", is dismissable on the grounds that the FCC is certainly not interested in getting constant such reports from amateurs.

I question the merit of questions like this one: they're so easy that anyone with even mediocre test-taking skills can get the answer without knowing anything more about amateur radio than the fact that it's regulated by the FCC.  One small bright spot on this: it appears that this question has been dropped from the 2010 pool, although I won't know that for sure until I do the full match-up and comparison.

This post has been brought to you by pool question T1D08.