Advogato blog for kelly

Station identification

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 23:09:36 GMT

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.

Mars is greener than you might think

Thu, 4 Feb 2010 03:12:02 GMT

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.

Odd things you find while looking for work

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:13:35 GMT

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".

More things you can't do on amateur radio

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 11:21:55 GMT

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.

The Responsibility of the Amateur Radio Operator

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 07:08:13 GMT

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.

Renewing your amateur radio license

Sat, 2 Jan 2010 09:09:21 GMT

So you've had your license now for ten whole years and it's about to expire. Obviously, you're going to want to renew it. The question is, how do you go about doing this?

Well, you have several choices. You can fill out a paper FCC Form 605 and mail it to the FCC. The problem with doing this is that this form is used by the FCC for about a half dozen different services; filling it out correctly is something of a challenge. So don't do that unless you have no other choice.

Second, you can renew through a VEC. The ARRL offers free renewals (except for vanity calls) through ARRL/VEC for its members, and will process renewals for nonmembers for a small fee.

Third, and probably simplest, is to renew online through the FCC's website. Every amateur licensee has been issued a CORES account by the FCC, and using this account information, can log into the FCC's site to manage his or her amateur license (as well as any other FCC licenses that he or she might have). This includes renewals, modifications of the various details on the license such as address or even name, and applications for vanity call signs. The only thing you cannot change via CORES is your license class; that can only be done via a VEC.

If you're like most people, of course, you've not used CORES since you got your license ten years ago (or never, if you got your license before CORES came online in the early 2000s) and so you don't know your password. Don't fret, the FCC will send you a password at your mailing address if you ask them to. (Of course, this assumes you've kept your address current on your license, but you're required to do that anyway.)

The only time the FCC charges a fee to renew an amateur license is if that license was issued a vanity call sign. In this case, to renew the license you must pay a new regulatory fee for a vanity license. If you do not wish to do so, you can first file a modification asking the FCC to issue you a new sequentially-issued call sign, which will convert your license back to a standard amateur license, which you can then renew for free.

You can renew your license beginning 90 days prior to its expiration, and for up to two years after it has expired. If you go beyond the two year grace period, you will have to retest, and you won't be able to get your call sign back, except by using the "former holder" provision of the vanity call sign program (for which you will have to pay a fee).

Remember also that the two year grace period is strictly a renewal-without-retest grace period. If your license expires, you may not operate on the air until the FCC has received, processed, and granted the renewal of your license, as reflected by the FCC's ULS license database.

This post has been brought to you by pool questions T1D06, T1D07, and T1D11.

Who can be a ham?

Tue, 8 Dec 2009 19:08:13 GMT

There aren't a lot of restrictions on who's allowed to be a ham radio operator, at least in the United States. There's four basic requirements that every person wishing to obtain an amateur radio license from the FCC must meet. The applicant must not be a representative of a foreign government, must have a mailing address somewhere where the United States Postal Service delivers mail, must not be prohibited by from being licensed by the FCC or by court order, and must successfully pass the required examination (or examinations) for the grade of license sought. What's more notable in this list of qualifications is what isn't required: more specifically, there's no minimum age and no citizenship or residency requirements.

There is no minimum age for licensees. The youngest licensee that I've been able to find record of was five; his license was earned back in the days when we still had the Novice exam. With the end of the Novice license, all new licensees must now pass the (somewhat harder) Technician test, which would be somewhat difficult for most five year olds, and the youngest Technician I've ever heard of was nine. (Unfortunately, I can neither find, nor remember, any details about either of these two child prodigies.)

Nor are licensees required to be either citizens or residents of the United States. Resident aliens are just as entitled to have a US-issued amateur license as citizens are, and even nonresident aliens can obtain one if they have an address in the United States at which they can receive mail. (A PO Box or mail drop, or the address of a friend or relative who is willing to forward your mail to you, is sufficient for this purpose.) However, if you do not have a Social Security Number, you will need to obtain a Federal Registration Number (FRN), via the FCC's website, prior to taking the license examinations, or the VE team will not be able to process your application. It's entirely possible to obtain an FCC license without ever setting foot in the United States, although I'm not clear on why one would want to do this.

The FCC does reserve the right to deny a license or license renewal, or to cancel a license, if the applicant or licensee "lacks the requisite character qualifications to be and remain a Commission licensee". This is pretty rare, though, and requires pretty signficant misconduct.

As a side note, there is no prohibition on federal government employees being amateur radio licensees. While no federal agency may obtain an FCC license (federal agencies are required to coordinate their radio activities through the NTIA instead of the FCC), in general nothing prohibits a federal employee from being an amateur radio operator on their own time. Federal employees who may have a reason to use amateur radio frequencies in the course of their duties must be specially authorized to do so by the FCC or by other relevant authority.

This post has been brought to you by pool questions T1D02 and T1D03. Section references above are to Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations, browsable via the GPO Access eCFR service.

Operator licenses, station licenses, and licensing-by-rule

Tue, 8 Dec 2009 07:08:50 GMT

The astute reader will, by now, have noticed that most of the recent articles on this blog have been related to questions on the amateur radio licensing exams used in the United States. This one is no different, but I'm going to get to where I'm going a bit circuitously. Bear with me here, there really is a point to all this.

In the United States, federal law (47 USC §301, the Communications Act) requires that any person who use a device which emits electromagnetic energy for the purpose of communications must do so pursuant to a license issued for that purpose. The FCC issues a large number of different licenses for various different uses; the different categories of license are grouped into what are called "services", which is a term that itself derives from the international Radio Regulations, which govern radio worldwide under the auspices of the ITU (which I've talked about earlier). However, some of these services include things like the Citizen's Band service and the Family Radio Service, which are commonly spoken of as being "unlicensed". How does this make sense, given that the Communications Act requires a license for everyone who uses a radio for communication?

Well, the FCC has a clever way around not bothering with issuing individual licenses to everyone with a CB radio (which they used to do) or FRS radio. The FCC declares that anyone (other than an agent of a foreign government) who possesses (for example) a Citizen's Band radio manufactured in accordance with FCC regulations is, by virtue of possession of that radio, "licensed by rule" to use it for the purpose of communications in accordance with the relevant regulations (in this case, Part 95 Subpart D, §95.401 through 428). As a result, persons licensed in services which are licensed-by-rule do not receive individually identified licenses.

Amateur radio, of course, is not a license-by-rule service; amateur radio licensees are individually licensed and do, in fact, receive individually identified operator licenses. And that's how we come back to the exam questions that I'm writing about: Question T1D01, on the Technician test, gives a list of radio services regulated by the FCC and asks which one is issued an "operator station license". Two of the services listed are "license-by-rule" services: the Family Radio Service and the Citizen's Radio Service. The third, the General Radiotelephone Service, does issue licenses (the General Radiotelephone Operator License, or GROL) to individually-identified persons, but this license does not entitle one to establish a station, only to operate, repair, maintain, or adjust stations already licensed in some other service; such licenses must be independently obtained and maintained. A GROL, or any other license under the General Radiotelephone Service, is an operator license only.

The amateur radio service is unique in that the license grant is a dual grant, both of an operator license and a primary station license, which is what the NCVEC is, somewhat inaccurately, calling an "operator station license" (the actual language in §97.5 is "operator/primary station license grant" and the NCVEC really should, but for some inexplicable reason did not, use the same language in the question as in the regulation). So this question, as inartfully worded as it is, is really testing on whether one understands the duality of the license grant in the amateur radio service, and (for that matter) if one recognizes that the amateur radio service is, in fact, called the "Amateur Radio Service". Not the best question, I must admit. I have to wonder if it'll be carried forward into the next version of the pool.

This post has been brought to you by pool question T1D01. Section references above are to Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations, browsable via the GPO Access eCFR service.

Keeping the "amateur" in amateur radio

Mon, 7 Dec 2009 21:23:22 GMT

I've talked quite a bit about what you can do on ham radio here. This post will talk about the restrictions that prevent the commercialization of amateur radio: things you cannot do on ham radio.

The first restriction I want to talk about is the prohibition on the use of ham radio "on a regular basis" for communications that "could reasonably be furnished alternatively through other radio services" (§97.113(a)(5)). This is basically the "noncompete" rule: the amateur radio service is not permitted to compete with or displace commercial radio services (for which the FCC collects licensing fees, some of which are quite substantial). In practice this rule is impossible to enforce, and would only be enforced in the most egregious of cases. However, hams should consider whether any proposed long-term ongoing use of amateur radio frequencies might be better accomplished in one of the other radio services, especially when the intent of that ongoing use is not very much in keeping with the basic purposes of the amateur radio service.

A more significant set of restrictions are the prohibitions on the use of amateur radio to facilitate commercial gain. There are basically two of these in the FCC rules. First, no amateur station may transmit any communication in which either the station licensee or the control operator has a "pecuniary interest"; this includes transmissions made on behalf of an employer (whether or not specific compensation is received). You may not operate a business (either your own or your employer's) via amateur radio, even if your business is related to amateur radio. You're not allowed to use ham radio frequencies to communicate with or about other employees of the business, with or about customers or vendors of the business, or with or about potential customers or vendors. The only exception to this rule is that you may use amateur radio to notify other amateurs of the availability of equipment for sale or trade (so-called "swap and shop" traffic), provided such communications are not conducted on a regular basis. If you're working on your friend's radio for him and he has promised to pay you for your time and effort when it's ready, you may not call him on the local repeater to tell him it's ready, as that would be a communication in which you have a pecuniary interest. But if you have a radio you're willing to trade or sell, you may use amateur radio to attempt to find someone willing to buy or trade for it, and consummate the transaction via amateur radio, provided you don't do this on a "regular basis".

Second, you cannot be paid to operate an amateur radio station (with two very limited exceptions which I won't cover here; they're found in §97.113 if you want to look). This has created some controversy of late because many local and state governments, as well as private entities that provide emergency services such as hospitals, have encouraged their employees to have and use amateur radio equipment for emergency communication purposes. The FCC recently issued a public notice clarifying this regulation: such employees may not use amateur radio while "on the clock" except in an actual emergency. The FCC has provided a waiver process for agencies who wish to allow their employees to participate in drills involving the use of amateur radio frequencies to obtain a waiver of this rule for the purpose of that drill. So far one such waiver has been applied for and approved, for a drill in Kentucky. A question I don't have an answer for yet is whether the Illinois indemnity and loss compensation scheme for volunteers accepted into service to the state during a disaster constitutes "employment" for the purpose of this rule.

This post has been brought to you by pool questions T1C11, T2A09, T2A10, T2A11, T2D04, G1B09, E1F10 and E1F11. Section references above are to Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations, browsable via the GPO Access eCFR service.

Hamming internationally

Sun, 6 Dec 2009 19:08:55 GMT

Historically, one of the major appeals of ham radio was the opportunity to use amateur radio to talk to people in far-off lands. While the Internet and cheap international long distance has cut into this somewhat, it's still a significant draw of the amateur service, and in fact building international goodwill is an explicit purpose of the amateur radio service (§97.1). Radio signals have a nasty habit of not respecting national boundaries, and as all of the HF bands have at least long-range if not world-wide propagation at least some of the time, it's very likely that any ham with HF privileges will at some time be involved in a conversation with someone in another country; even someone without HF privileges has a decent chance of it. The availability of direct, personal international communications via ham radio has been quite controversial historically, and some of the special rules that apply to international communications can be clearly tied to the geopolitical history of the 20th century.

The general rule for international communications for amateur radio operators is that they are allowed. However, if the national communications authority of either country involved has notified the ITU that it objects to international amateur radio communications, then the communication is prohibited. The United States does not currently ban any countries, and at the present time there are, in fact, no banned countries.

In addition, all international communications must be "limited to communications incidental to the purposes of the amateur service and to remarks of a personal character" (§97.117). This is much more restrictive than the rules for domestic amateur radio communications. The main purpose of these restrictions is to prohibit communications of a political nature, and it is, in fact, a very bad idea in many countries. Communications of a political nature are permitted in the US (although many of us believe they should be discouraged), but they are, in fact, forbidden across national boundaries and hams would be well advised to avoid them.

In addition, when operating internationally there are limits on your authority to forward messages on behalf of others (so-called "third party communications"). Third party communications (messages forwarded for people who are not themselves amateur radio operators) are limited to the same terms mentioned above regarding content. In addition, the general rule for third party communications is that they are prohibited except when specifically authorized, except for emergency and disaster relief communications. So, while amateurs have the presumptive right to chat with one another, they do not have a presumptive right to pass messages for third parties. Passing messages for third parties requires that a "third party message agreement" be in effect between the countries involved. The United States presently has such agreements with about four dozen countries; the current list can be found on the FCC's website. It should be noted that virtually none of Europe is on this list: third party traffic to European stations is generally prohibited. This rule also applies to the situation where a nonlicensed person participates in the sending of a message (usually, by allowing someone other than a licensed amateur talk into the microphone). In other words, if you're in the US talking to a ham in Germany, you may not put your kid on the radio unless your kid is also a licensed ham (the third party rule does not apply if the third party is eligible to be the control operator of the transmitting station).

Another small note: when operating internationally (or domestically, for that matter) it's perfectly acceptable to carry out the conversation in a language other than English. However, you are required to identify in English, even if the conversation is progressing in some other language. The internationally-standardized NATO phonetic alphabet, which is encouraged in the amateur service anyway, counts as "English" for the purpose of this rule (which is, for the record, §97.119(b)(2)).

This post has been brought to you by pool questions T1C10, T2B07, T2D05, G1E05, G1E07, G1E08, G1E09, G1E10, and E1F16. Section references above are to Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations, browsable via the GPO Access eCFR service.