Rod, It was Philadelphia, actually. But with all you have gone through lately, you are excused. I hope things are getting better. Frank...N2FF.... w6rod@ix.netcom.com wrote:
I sent this earlier this morning but didn't get a copy of it back. If this turns out to be a duplicate message sorry for the inconvenience. 73, Rod W6ROD
-----Forwarded Message----- From: w6rod@ix.netcom.com Sent: Apr 26, 2005 6:22 AM To: arrl-odv@arrl.org Subject: Re: [arrl-odv:12171] Re: The EC Allocation by Bandwidth Proposal
Those of you who were around "pre-Riley" can remember we didn't have ANY enforcement for several years. The famous Enforcement Task Force meeting in Baltimore (I think) when Richard Lee of the FCC attended was when the FCC finally started generating some enforcement.
Riley came along at just the right time. He had, and has had for several years, a seemingly genuine desire to try to clean up the ham bands after much neglect by the FCC. He also liked the publicity he received and the attention he received from the "enforcement starved" amateur community. He hit the streets at the right time and it has worked pretty well for several years now. The FCC enforcement "higher-ups" felt a little embarrassed I think in having allowed the ham bands to be neglected for quite a while and were willing to let Riley devote a lot of time and energy to make up lost ground. He has done that. At least the impression among most hams is that we have a reasonable amount of enforcement now. There are obviously pockets of trouble where problems exist like So. California but I think in general the enforcement landscape is much different than it was was when Chris Imlay and I were trying to get them to do ANYTHING in the mid-90's.
Chris will certainly recall in our talks with the FCC we were just hoping for that elusive "maintenance level" of enforcement! Any enforcement would have been an improvement. I think it is correct that we need to start planning for the "post-Riley" enforcement era. While Riley is still around and an available resource it might be a good idea to have another "task force -type" committee working on a plan and meeting with FCC officials to see what changes can be made in the reporting and evidence gathering process to make things go along smoothly. Even if the overall work of the committee doesn't result in any significant changes to the process we have at least made it known to the FCC ( and involved them in the process) that we still very much interested in enforcement. It is sort of like our legislative effort for a long period of time. We knew that we might not get exactly what we wanted but the "legislative project" gave us an opportunity to keep talking about what we wanted. It was pretty hard to forget us when we kept coming to see them.
73, Rod W6ROD
-----Original Message----- From: Kay Craigie Sent: Apr 26, 2005 5:31 AM To: arrl-odv Subject: [arrl-odv:12171] Re: The EC Allocation by Bandwidth Proposal
For what it's worth, Riley has been using the "first we nail the big bad guys, then we do maintenance level enforcement" line ever since he was given the enforcement task several years ago. So this expression in itself doesn't signal a winding-down on his part. Nevertheless, with his retirement coming sooner rather than later, I hope we have plans to convince the FCC that enforcement should not depart along with him. 73 - Kay N3KN