RadioBanter - View Single Post

July 2nd 05, 03:54 AM

wrote in
oups.com:

KØHB wrote:
wrote

90% of all Canadians live within 75 miles of the USA, a distance
trivial to HF propagation.

Within 75 miles of the border, maybe. But not within 75 miles of
most US hams.

????????? I don't live within 75 miles of most US hams either, but
I have evidence that thousands of them hear my signal.

Sure.

But most of us don't have antennas or amplifiers like yours, Hans.

2-way HF contacts between VE
and W hams also are commonplace, so it seems that problems in
the Canadian
regulations would be very visible here.

Only if there were enough of them to have such problems. The Canadian
amateur population (thanks, Leo) is less than 10% of the US amateur
population.

But they do have arbitrary bandwidth limits.

Yup, a single bandwidth applied to the whole band. Not sliced
and diced and
micromanaged into all manner of itty-bitty pockets, yet allowing one
privileged mode free access to all those so-called protected segments.
You can't really pretend with a straight face that this hodge-podge
makes sense!

It makes more sense than a free-for-all.

Since, as you point out, their bands are virtually the same
ones we use right next door, certainly we'd know about any problems
with their style of regulation.

They have far fewer hams than the USA, spread out over a
larger area.

You said that before, and I've disproven the "spread out over a
larger area" myth. Canadian hams are quite geographically
concentrated, regardless of the size of their wonderful contry. Most
Canadians live in a 75- mile (give or take)
corridor along the US border, and are further concentrated into a
few metropolitan "clumps" along that strip.

Most US hams live on or near the coasts, too.

What works in the country (low-density-of-hams places)
won't necessarily work in the city (high-density-of-hams places).

Most of the rest of the developed world places far more
restrictions on the ownership of firearms than the USA.
And they have far less violent crime, too. Since that
seems to work for them, would you propose the USA adopt such
restrictions?

My proposal is to remove restrictions, not add them! You're the
fella propounding that restrictions are a good deal.

I'm saying that because something works in another country doesn't mean
it will work here. Perhaps we should adopt Canada's health care system
too? That would end the busloads of people going north on trips to buy
their medicines at reasonable prices.

Almost nothing could be any worse than the state of health care in the US.
We could do a lot worse than Canada just by doing nothing.

I propose that along with freedom (from arbitrary restrictions)
comes the
responsibility to act responsibly, and I submit that generally
US hams have demonstrated that sort of responsibility.

I submit that we don't fix what ain't broke.

But it is 'broke'. If I have to go split to talk to the DX, that's quite
broke enough to need fixing.

Morse (a "narrow" mode) is allowed on all MF/HF frequencies except
the 60M channels. Have you seen any problems caused by that?

Nope - because Morse operators, in general, voluntarily stay out of
the 'phone/image subbands.

Ah, yes, I see. The hams have VOLUNTARILY sorted out where to
transmit. In
other words, a regulation wasn't needed. What a concept!

The hams who use Morse, that is. Have you noticed that almost all
on-air-behavior-related FCC enforcement actions are for alleged
violations using *voice* modes?

I guess no-one caught that guy who used to send ..-. ..- -.-. -.- on
repeaters around here

You mean it was formally submitted as a restructuring proposal in
the past year or two?

It was formally submitted (3 times) in response to other related
matters.

So it wasn't submitted as a restructuring proposal, but as comments to
other proposals.

Too bad. I'd like to see what the general reaction would be to such a
proposal, even if I don't agree with it.

73 de Jim, N2EY