N5FDL Amateur Radio

Here is the proposed wording for an amendment to 97.113 that was passed by the ARRL’s Board of Directors at its 1-15/16 meeting:

§97.113 Prohibited Transmissions
(a) No amateur station shall transmit:
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(3) Communications in which the station licensee or control operator has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer, except that the station licensee or control operator may, on behalf an employer, participate in emergency preparedness and disaster drills that include amateur operations for the purpose of emergency response, disaster relief or the testing and maintenance of equipment used for that purpose. Amateur operators may, however, notify other amateur operators of the availability for sale or trade of apparatus normally used in an amateur station, provided that such activity is not conducted on a regular basis;

This is not terrible wording and having spent weeks working on wording, that is no small feat—especially for a large committee. Frankly, I was 50/50 on whether the League would support a change to 97.113. It will be interesting to read the final minutes of the meeting and see how the debate went.

My main concern about this wording is that its too wordy (amateurs may participate in drills that include amateurs!). The lack of breaking the paragraph into pieces makes it seem like swap nets have something to do with emergency response (at least remove the “however” from the next sentence).

The major failing is that there is no provision for the employee who runs the RACES program to talk on the radio about the program, or to its members about program “business” such as meetings, outside of organized drills and exercises. I am pretty sure the wording does include regularly-scheduled nets and such but don’t understand why the “testing” wording is necessary. Is testing so special that it needs to be called out?

I am sure others have the same sort of complaints about our wording, which I—of course—think is much better. Heck, wording we didn’t use is better than this. But, it is not bad wording. It does accomplish the task and the FCC is unlikely to use anyone’s wording but its own. Any proposed wording is just to make sure the FCC understands the issue and what you want to accomplish.

It is good to have the ARRL involved on “the right side” of this issue. I hope the FCC will soon assign an RM number and designate comment periods so we can get this change into the rules. It is my fervent hope the League won’t feel the need to file a petition of its own and possibly delay the process.