Here’s their release:
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http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-10-365A1.txt
DA 10-365
Released: March 3, 2010
WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU AND PUBLIC SAFETY AND HOMELAND
SECURITY BUREAU SEEK COMMENT ON REQUEST BY AMERICAN HOSPITAL
ASSOCIATION FOR BLANKET WAIVER TO PERMIT HOSPITALS TO USE AMATEUR
RADIO AS PART OF EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS DRILLS
WP Docket No. 10-54
Comment Date: April 2, 2010 Reply Date: April 19, 2010
73,
Benn KC5CW
Here’s their release:
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(Download a copy of the petition here. .DOC format).
These groups, and a few others, could run afoul of the “pecuniary interest” prohibition while doing things like operating from the International Space Station, writing a product review, or participating in a contest.
Here is CQ’s proposed wording:
Proposed Rule Changes
18. Therefore, for the reasons cited above, petitioner proposes the following changes to §97.113 (Proposed additions in italics; proposed deletions are shown with a strikethrough):
1. Amend subsection (a), paragraph (3), as follows:
§97.113 Prohibited transmissions.
(a) No amateur station shall transmit:
(3) Communications in which the station licensee or control operator has a pecuniary interest, including communications on behalf of an employer, except as otherwise provided in these rules. 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;
2. Add a new subsection(e), as follows:
(e) Communications on behalf of an employer may be transmitted on an occasional basis, provided that:
(1) Such communications are incidental to the employee’s normal job responsibilities and are conducted voluntarily;
(2) Such communications are conducted during an employee’s personal time, including but not limited to lunch hours, days off and other non-compensated time periods, and
(3) The primary beneficiaries of such communications are other amateurs and/or members of the general public, and not the employer.
(4) Nothing in these rules shall be construed to limit the recreational use of an amateur station on an employer’s premises by a duly licensed employee, as authorized by the station licensee.
3. Redesignate existing subsection (e) as (f) make the following changes:
(f) No station shall retransmit programs or signals emanating from any type of radio station other than an amateur station, except propagation and weather forecast information intended for use by the general public and originated from United States Government stations and communications, including incidental music, originating on United States Government frequencies between a manned space vehicle shuttle and its associated Earth stations. Prior approval for manned space vehicle shuttle retransmissions must be obtained from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Such retransmissions must be for the exclusive use of amateur operators. Propagation, weather forecasts, and manned space vehicle shuttle retransmissions may not be conducted on a regular basis, but only occasionally, as an incident of normal amateur radio communications.
4. Redesignate existing subsection (f) as (g).
In a more-reasoned era, this wording was not necessary and good sense prevailed. With the FCC on the warpath, this petition now seems necessary.
I am supportive of this petition, but don’t like one paragraph, specifically the one that requires employees to communicate “on their own time.”
I don’t see how to make this work in the real world, especially with public safety employees. Are workers really expected to submit special time sheets to make sure they are not paid while on-the-air? And what about people who multitask, are they supposed to add up their total airtime and have it deducted from their wages?
I understand what CQ hoped to accomplish with the paragraph. We considered and quickly rejected similiar wording for our petition, based on the reasoning I’ve outlined.
When the FCC finally assigns a Rule Making number and comment periods on this issue, I will comment in favor of the CQ proposal.
]]>My radio is now down at Yaesu in Orange County and is having the fix applied. This problem (described in the video posted below) appears to effect all FTM-350R’s now available.
Not being fixed—because it cannot be reliably reproduced—is the problem of the radio hanging, apparently while receiving an APRS packet. I have had this happen on five occasions, so it’s not a showstopper. But, the only way to restart the radio is to remove power from the base unit, which can be inconvenient and shouldn’t be necessary, in any case.
I have had other reports of this problem, but am aware of no specific cause or cure. Seems to be a software issue.
Finally, the Bluetooth VOX on my FTM-350R is useless, which makes Bluetooth hands-free impossible. I am not sure how common this problem is. I sent my Yaesu Bluetooth headset in with the radio for testing.
It is a shame that a radio that in many ways is such a breakthrough was not better tested (and fixed) before release.
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Do you suppose this radio was actually tested before it was released? How difficult is it drive around and see if the navigation function points in the right direction?
It appears the radio cannot be changed with a firmware upgrade, so I am expecting they may all need to go back to the factory. As I remember, there was also a recall of VX-8’s when they were released.
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;)
Click for larger imageThis photo illustrates—you have to take my word for it until I can post a video—how my FTM-350R will not properly navigate to a “point” stored in the radio’s memory. In this case, I want to navigate to WY6E-11, which is ahead of me and off to the left.
However, the display clearly shows the destination “D” as being behind me and off to the right.
The error changes depending on the direction of travel.
Going north, the target error is to the right but north and south seem to be ahead and behind, where they should be.
Going west, a target that should be ahead displays as behind and vice versa. But, when when due south, appears properly in the display. Until you drive past, when the destination becomes ahead of you when it’s really behind. Not to worry, when the destination was in front, it displayed as behind.
I am talking to Yaesu about this.
]]>OK, I want to use the NAVI function to drive to a location or “point” as the radio calls it. I have received a packet from a friend at his house. I saved the location as a point.
I am now navigating to the point. I am south of the point, headed north, the NAVI screen (which I think is “heading up” on the display) shows me heading toward the point.
The point is two blocks off the road I am on. It is to the west (left on the display) of the road. But, as I get closer, instead of deviating to the left (west) and pointing toward the point, the target moves right (east) about the same number of degrees as is should me moving to the left.
When I am going west (and the target is north of me) it seems to do the same thing, moving the target northeast when it should be moving northwest.
When I drive to the target, I get the GOAL indication as I would expect.
Can someone attempt to reproduce this behavior? It must be something I’ve set-up wrong, but with these lousy manuals, who can tell?
]]>§97.113 Prohibited Transmissions
(a) No amateur station shall transmit:
**********
(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.
