I don't think this is somehow an enhancement to enable secure coms
utilization by hams for emcom. That sort of move would be pushed by the
feds asking for the ARRL endorsement as an avenue to get ham buy-in. This
is going the other way - the FCC denied this symbol rate petition 5 years
ago and it does not look like it's their idea this time either.
My kids already ask me why I would want to use RTTY when there is Skype chat
available at zero cost, nearly zero gear investment and requires no
antennas. Just wait till I tell them that the latest "modernization"
proposal by the ARRL is really a swap of RTTY DX/contesting/ragchewing and
in it's place will be a lot of coastal email gateways for the yachting guys
wanting to save money on their email!
73/jeff/ac0c
www.ac0c.com
alpha-charlie-zero-charlie
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Chudek - K0RC
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 6:09 AM
To: rtty@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [RTTY] ARRL attack on current RTTY users
Sometimes you just need to 'sleep on the problem' in order for your
brain to work on it. I think that happened to me last night.
A number of years ago (5 to 10) I was invited to a meeting with county
officials responsible for local emergency preparedness. This was a
meeting held periodically to discuss the progress of the county's 'civil
crisis' procedures. This is to prepare for scenarios where society was
on brink of failure. Things like what is done with thousands of deceased
people if they died within a few days from conflict or disease, etc.
(The short answer to that question was to identify and tag the bodies
and inter them in temporary trench graves to await additional
'processing' after the crisis was over.)
Among the group of county officials (sheriff, medical examiner, council
members) was the IT manager who had invited me and the local ham radio
EC group. During the meeting, the status of countywide communications
came up for discussion. It was stated that *secured communication
channels would be necessary* and that the appropriate (scrambling)
equipment was not yet in place but was on order. There was additional
discussion regarding why a secured system was necessary during a civil
emergency.
The thought passed through my mind at that very moment "Well that pretty
much negates any use of amateur radio if secured communication links are
required. The FCC does not allow cyphered systems on the amateur bands."
I blew this off until just this morning, when I recalled that meeting I
attended some years ago.
Now I am wondering whether this "rail job" by the ARRL isn't being
driven by the "need" to provide that level of encrypted communication
when necessary. If the gumment can't / won't use open communication
links during a crisis, that effectively removes the amateur radio
community from the disaster relief picture.
73 de Bob - KØRC in MN
------------------------------------------------------------------------
On 11/23/2013 12:55 AM, Jeff Blaine wrote:
I guess this is the thing that has me curious - the end user. All the
years I've been a ham (40?), the rule was that communications could not be
encrypted. That communication was primarily point to point and for the
benefit of the hams. That the language could not be a code type but was
an international type. I guess mixed in there was a war-time tradition of
handling message traffic.
If the push for pactor/winlink is really about email (which despite the
alternative emcom use claims, email seems to be at the root), that does
not really fit in with the traditional ham use of the bands. There are
commercial services for email via radio. Opening up the digital bands so
guys could play around with that mode does make sense, but only if it's an
open sourced format. I don't use SSTV, for example, but I respect the
subgroup of hams who appreciate it and like it.
The real issue that seems to make this approach fall into the "wrong"
category is that the mode seems to be focused on enabling the ham bands to
service unrelated parties to the communications. email is a commercial
venture and does not seem to be a logical extension of the traditional ham
use as 1) the volume of data in an email is HUGE HUGE compared to the
efficient com of even your rag-chewing guy and 2) the station serving as
the hub is simply a relay to another point.
73/jeff/ac0c
www.ac0c.com
alpha-charlie-zero-charlie
-----Original Message----- From: Kok Chen
Sent: Saturday, November 23, 2013 12:01 AM
To: Jeff Blaine
Cc: rtty@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [RTTY] ARRL attack on current RTTY users
On Nov 22, 2013, at 8:37 PM, Jeff Blaine wrote:
As I look back at this topic, the ARRL actions and the arguments seen
here are about the same ones as in 1995, but at that time, the
winlink/pactor intention was a bit more obvious. This time it's a very
low key operation...
Jeff,
It is low key, but either (1) they are naive, or (2) they think *we* are
naive.
I encourage everyone to take a *close* look at ARRL's petition, as filed.
http://www.arrl.org/files/media/News/Petition%20for%20Rule%20Making%20AS-FILED%2011%2015%202013.pdf
(As with reading patents, where you can skip all the prior-art and stuff
and jump directly to Claims. In the case of this petition, you can jump
past all the lawyer talk and go directly to see the proposed changes. That
is the part that will affect us in the future, not the explanations and
justifications.)
Specifically, go to near the end of the manuscript, where the proposed
change to 97.307 (f) (3) are listed. First...
(A) they removed the requirement that specific digital codes need to be
used, by adding a sentence that allows unpublished codes (see 97.309(b))
to be used on Amateur bands!
Currently (before petition), you have to adhere to 97.309(a), which states
that the code used in a digital transmission must be either Baudot, ASCII,
Amtor (which is a 7 bit extension of Baudot), or if it is none of these,
the code has to be *publicly documented* (emphasis mine).
This makes PSK31 Varicode, DominoEX Varicode, etc also legit. While keeps
proprietary codes prohibited.
Modern proprietary codes are basically the same as encryption -- they are
usually weak encryption but nevertheless protected by the DMCA (Digital
Millennium Copyright Act, enacted by Congress in 1998). The DMCA thus
keeps you from being able to reverse engineer proprietary modems in order
to decode messages that passes through public Amateur air space.
Notice that by allowing unpublished code, the ARRL modifications will
negate the protection we have currently from manufacturers who obscure the
protocols and codes that are use in the proprietary modems which they
sell.
When you get QRMed, you cannot tell who is QRMing you. Interference is
therefore unenforcible, since it cannot even be reported.
The petition then...
(B) removes the 300 baud restriction from 97.307 (f) (3).
That part at least follows the purported intent of the petition. However,
the petition goes on to ...
(C) allow bandwidths of up to 2.8 kHz.
Notice that of the changes that I listed above as (A), (B), and (C),
*only* item (B) has *anything* whatsoever to do with the purported
objective of the petition.
So, why did the ARRL include the changes (A) and (C) that I listed above?!
For those who are curious... as written, the proposed changes to 97.307
(f) (3) allows Pactor 4, among probably some other modems to become legal.
Pactor 4 is not legal today.
Before today, I only had the 2004 version of Part 97 on my bookshelf, and
held back on commenting on what appeared to be a glaring problem in the
petition. The 2007 copy of Part 97 arrived at my doorstep late this
afternoon. I wanted to be sure that I was not imagining things as related
to the current 97.309.
73
Chen, W7AY
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