>>>AA6YQ comments below
From: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com [mailto:digitalra...@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of J. Moen Sent: Friday, March 05, 2010 10:11 PM To: digitalradio@yahoogroups.com Subject: RE: [digitalradio] Re: Statement on Withdrawal of Support for ROS (K3UK Sked Pages) Dave, You make good points, and you've already hugely contributed and continue to contribute to Ham Radio, so I don't mean to question you. >>>The fact that I write free software for the amateur community doesn’t mean >>>my posts are beyond question. I make mistakes just like everyone else does, >>>and don’t mind being called on them. But if the FCC agent does not consider us Hams a bunch of squabbling children, I guess we are lucky. We sure look that way to me. I am deeply disappointed about this ROS affair. The major parties in the conflict did not conduct themselves well. As a citizen of the US, it is embarassing the FCC rules don't take bandwidth into account when defining what modes are legal on what bands, and they don't, as you point out, technically define spread spectrum. This probably does not look good to most of the rest of the ham radio world. But given the FCC's statement about each amateur radio operator being responsbile for determining what a mode is and where, therefore, it can be legally operated, I suspect the ham community in the US would have been better off letting each amateur make that determination. I don't think it was wise to immediately contact FCC and ask them, given the givens. This is usually true in every general situation like this, until all the facts can be gathered. At the same time, we have to admit that the author or ROS, similar to FCC's lack of clarity in their rules, has not technically defined ROS very well so far. I hope that changes. Overall, these past weeks have not been amateur radio's finest hours. >>>It has been a bit of a perfect storm: attractive new mode, described as >>>spread spectrum by its developer, US hams unable to use spread spectrum on >>>HF, but no clear definition of what constitutes spread spectrum. 73, Dave, AA6YQ
