From: "Todd, KA1KAQ" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Lack of support for the power issue...
Let's give ARRL credit where credit is due. They did support us on the power issue. I spoke with Dave Sumner personally in the issue while the proceeding was still pending and he pretty well agreed with me. After receiving a lot of mail from the AM community, the Board of Directors voted to petition the FCC to eliminate the 1990 "sunset" clause and permanently grandfather the old DC input power limit for AM.
The fly in the ointment was John Johnston, Chief of the Personal Radio Branch of the FCC's Private Radio Bureau. Johnston, a self-proclaimed "career civil servant" was a real pro at spin, deception and dodging the issue when confronted in any way regarding his agenda. One of Johnston's ham radio buddies from Texas, a bloke named Prechtl with a 5th district callsign, had petitioned the FCC several years earlier to eliminate AM, apparently in response to a "frequency ownership" dispute with a late-night AM group that met regularly on 7160 kHz. Prechtl originally held a 3rd district callsign from near Washington DC, and Johnston publicly referred to him on a first name basis. Johnston remained head of the amateur radio rulemaking division of the FCC, which went through several name changes each time the FCC "restructured", for over 25 years, and throughout that period had consistently shown bias against AM.
At the Dayton FCC Forum that year, Johnston gave a speech about how the amateur community was using their word processors to waste the FCC's time with a flood of superfluous petitions. As an example, he used the AM power issue. His words, to the best of my recollection went something like this: "Here we have two petitions regarding amplitude modulation. One from the ARRL, wants to CHANGE THE RULES so that AM CAN RUN TWICE AS MUCH POWER AS EVERYBODY ELSE. Then we have another one from (Prechtl) who wants to eliminate AM altogether." His deceptive tactic was to imply that the FCC would take the "sensible" approach and dismiss both petitions (which they did). The Commission had set on that petition for over two years without taking any action, but as soon as they found it convenient, it suddenly appeared with an RM- number along side the ARRL's.
Don k4kyv
______________________________________________________________ Our Main Website: http://www.amfone.net AMRadio mailing list List Rules (must read!): http://w5ami.net/amradiofaq.html List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.html Post: mailto:AMRadio@mailman.qth.net To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word unsubscribe in the message body.
