At 01:14 PM 10/16/2006, Sumner, Dave, K1ZZ wrote:

The ARRLWeb page that has been collecting member comments on the FCC omnibus proceeding is now available for viewing by Board members at: http://www.arrl.org/members-only/mailresp.html

It will properly display the text of any message that contains a plain-text version of its contents. It will NOT show HTML messages in HTML because of the potential for spam/phishing. Dave K1ZZ

After WT 04-140 came out a month ago, the Bandplan Committee decided it would be useful to ask members for input on revisions to the existing bandplans as a result of the changes the FCC made. Newington set up an e-mail address for comments to be sent to, and has had a web news item on the home page for the last month. The original deadline that was set for comments was October 31st, but that was extended until the FCC decision is published in the Federal Register. I'm pretty sure VP Roderick (committee chairman) didn't expect to get what has come into the e-mail address. Me either.... There are about 600 e-mails so far, and another couple are coming in daily. I've read more than 90% of them and thought it might be useful to give the Board some feedback - since a lot of the input does NOT have to do with revising band plans. 1) All of those sending in comments received a brief reply message saying:

Thank you for taking the time to respond to the ARRL's request for comments on the FCC's recent "omnibus" proceeding. Although we cannot reply to individual e-mails, rest assured that your comments ARE being read and considered by the ARRL Board of Directors.

2) Only about 5% of the messages have any useful information related to band plans. Most of them are comments about the FCC Report & Order, some in favor, some not. 3) Since most comments are about the R&O and specific likes and dislikes, all Board members ought to at least review the comments from members in their own Divisions. 4) The quickly-put-together tool for viewing incoming messages is not very good. There is no easy way to quickly go through the messages or to just select those in a particular Division. 5) A lot of people voiced strong opinions about the FCC and the ARRL - much stronger than I expected (plus and minus). This R&O, as "minor" was it may be (mostly impacting 80/75m) has generated a lot of emotion. This should probably tell us something about what will happen when the FCC rules on the Morse Code and regulation by bandwidth petitions. We should probably work out some plans to handle the "controversy" (change). 6) A large number of those who commented have some facts wrong, even with our web stories. They also do not understand that we gathered considerable input on the refarming proposal a few years ago, and that at this point the FCC action is final (barring a Petition for Reconsideration). 7) It's interesting that some General Class licensees see 04-140 as a reversal of what happened with incentive licensing (that must mean they are SSB operators, not CW/digital). 8) As might be expected, there are lots of comments critical of moving SSB down to 3600, though most appear to be willing to settle for 3650. There is a lot of concern about wide digital modes like Winlink - some coming from people in state EOCs, etc. If the R&O in the Federal Register does not resolve the wide digital issue, I think we need to file for Reconsideration. I'm also pretty convinced we should do the same for SSB down to 3650. In any case, I found that I wanted to reply to all of those in New England that had submitted comments. In order to do that, I had to scan through all of the comments... So I extracted them all, put them in a MS Word document so they could be read more easily and looked up each one so I could tell what Division they were all from. Mr Weaver gets the gold star for the most comments submitted from a Division, probably as a result of his newsletter (he also got the most comments from never- or former members). Not sure why the SW Division had so few comments. So, the attached file is about 1.3mb - 170 pages. If you find it too cumbersome to go through to look for your constituents, let me know and I'll extract the comments from just your Division and send them in a separate message. Note there are comments from 28 former members and 11 who have never been members - an opportunity to sign them up... I highly recommend that you at least acknowledge each one from your Division. My remaining questions: 1) Should we modify anything about our bandwidth petition based on what the FCC did in 04-140? 2) Will W1AW be moving on 80m? -- Tom DivisionTotal messagesFrom former membersFrom never members ATL4331 CEN351 DAK10 DEL251 GL6571 HUD291 MID363 NE541 NW5622 PAC2611 RM282 ROA5531 SE5722 SW1921 WG461 UNK6 5802811 ===== e-mail: k1ki@arrl.org ARRL New England Division Director http://www.arrl.org/ Tom Frenaye, K1KI, P O Box J, West Suffield CT 06093 Phone: 860-668-5444