Of course our behavior as a group is highly predictable, otherwise a variant of
this discussion wouldn't recur each year...
Every time the topic does comes up, one thing that strikes me is the degree of
arbitrariness. We don't have a technical performance-based rule (-xx dBc @ +3
kHz) for how close we can get to the band edge. We have an absolute prohibition
(no emission out of band). That's a rule with which it may lierally be
impossible for anyone to ever transmit a signal and still be in compliance
(think about transmitted phase noise).
"Good practices" may suggest 3 kHz but there's no black and white, right or
wrong, how close is too close; 14347.00 minus epsilon doesn't absolutely
guarantee that I'm on the side of the angels and 14347.00 plus epsilon isn't
necessarily going to run me afoul of the Feds (I'd agree that 14348.5 or
7150.00 are horses of a different color). If anything, adopting a de facto
standard of 3 kHz is quite generous and affords ourselves a substantial benefit
of the doubt.
Getting an advisory notice about adherence with this conventional wisdom is not
in any way inappropriate, unjustified or unfair. It may serve as an important
and useful reminder. But to anyone cognizant of the subtlety and ambiguity in
the FCC rules, receiving such a notice doesn't convey very much in the way of
new or useful information on which to act.
If this were to happen to me, I hope I'd been fully aware that calling someone
on 14346.97 was getting pretty darn close to the functional definition of the
"band edge". Under those circumstances, a valuable notice would be one that
informed me that I'd actually been heard out of band; an irrelevant notice is
one that informs me that I worked a station that was on 14347.03 sent by
somebody who was busy logging notices to check any further for a more
definitive infraction.
If an implication of these notices this is how FCC Monitoring went about
issuing their citations in the past? Well, that's very interesting but how
relevant might that be today?
73,
Mike K1MK
k1mk@alum.mit.edu
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