W1NR replied to NQ4I's question about lower-class license holders
operating at a multi-multi:
>The "control operator" is the person who is in "control" of the operation of
>the station AT THE TIME OF TRANSMISSION. It is NOT the station licensee
>unless that person is "in control" of the station. In a m-m, this normally
>means the person sitting at the radio and operating the contest. If an
>extra is sitting beside a general in the extra portion of the band, the
>extra class is the "control operator" and the general is third party. Third
>party rules then apply. The general class cannot be legally "in control" of
>the station when operating outside of his/her privileges. They also cannot
>legally contact stations in countries that do not have third party
>agreements with the country of the station.
>
>Now what gets grey is this so called "third party" rule. There have been
>conflicting interpretations of this in the past. In some cases, if you are
>"licensed" you are not considered a "third party". In the case of a
>repeater or satellite where a technician class is operating on 2m and the
>signal is being repeated on 10m, third party does not apply. My question is
>why a tech is considered third party if they are using 10m directly with an
>extra standing beside them as the "control operator".
An amateur station being operating by a licensed amateur operator that
is communicating with another amateur station is _not_ third party traffic.
The "third party" refers to someone else. Like everything else, this comes
from the ITU-RR & providing communication services to others is
something the Amateur Service is not allowed to do.
Some administrations are so fanatical about this that it wasn't until a few
years ago that here in VR2 we were not allowed to provide
communications for public service events.
Like USA, we have provisions for lower class license operators to operate
someone else's station, but despite the sort of folks we have in our
telecom authority (they do occasionally do some really silly things), they
would not consider this to be third party traffic.
If the guy started passing messages on behalf of a non-amateur, or the
operator of the other station was not an amateur, then it falls foul of the
very definition of the Amateur Service - amateurs communicating with
other "duly authorized persons interested in radio technique solely with a
personal aim & without any pecuniary interest".
More details needed, but it's only third party if the operator on either end
is not a duly authorized person or if the communications are on behalf
of someone else.
73, VR2BrettGraham
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