ARRL Ad Hoc HF Digital Committee

March 24, 2003

ARRL Board of Directors
American Radio Relay League
225 Main Street
Newington, CT, 06111-1494

Gentlemen:

Please find attached the final committee report from the Ad Hoc HF Digital Committee that was formed at the request of the Board at the July 2002 meeting.

The committee met continuously via email from December 31, 2002 until it adjourned March 24, 2003. The committee has tried hard to represent the interests of the amateur community as large as well as those of digital operators.

Digital operation is one of the fastest growing areas in amateur radio today. It embraces all that the younger generation considers important, to include the computer, digital messaging of all kinds, and the Internet. I believe that we are just on the outer edge of these technologies and these developments may become the mainstay for the future of amateur radio. These are the modes of operation and interests that will bring the next generation of radio amateurs into the fold.

Change is difficult and our recommendations advocate change from past modes of operation but we are not the first to try and face these issues. I would like to quote from Lyle Johnson, KK7P, and the former president of TAPR (from TAPR’s “HFSIG” list in 2002:
 
“In 1977 the FCC tried to eliminate modes and make the HF band segments based on bandwidth only. There was a HUGE hue and cry raised by the amateur community, and in the end all we got was approval to use ASCII. When we did packet in the early 80's, we initially just sent text so that packet could be deemed to be ASCII...
 
“In the mid-80's we (at that time I was on the ARRL Digital Committee) tried to get the rules changed to allow bandwidth-related modes on HF, or at least in some sub-bands.  Once again, the "old guard" makes a lot of noise. ‘That's where I run AMTOR. You're gonna interfere with my RTTY. Hey! I want to operate CW there...’, ‘CW is the most efficient mode of Amateur communications! Etc...’
 
“So, we have the outdated and hard-to-interpret rules of today.
 
“Hard to interpret? Well, let's say I have a way to send digital voice in a 3 kHz bandwidth.  Do I do this in the phone bands (it is voice, after all) or in the non-phone segment (it is data, after all). This is the same mentality that causes people to think that warehousing valuable spectrum in little-used, ‘closed’ repeaters is somehow in the spirit of Amateur radio.”

Perhaps the time has finally come. We need rules that are flexible enough to embrace innovation of all kinds and we believe these recommendations will take us a long way in that direction.

One final note: One member of the committee, Howard Teller, KH6TY, strongly disagrees with much of what the committee has done and recommends. He has advised the committee that he will submit his own report directly to the ARRL Board.

73, Victor Poor, W5SMM
Committee Chairman