David also had comments on how his favorite event, the Baker to Vegas charity run, has decided to replace ham radio with communications from Verizon (while still urging them to volunteer for other jobs). There’s more to that story, and it’s not isolated to that event. The MS Society is using ham radio less for smaller, more urban walks. And in the Emcomm arena, Auxcom leaders have been saying that hams should be cross-trained for communication on other systems. That’s something to dig into on a future show.
Meanwhile, we noted that the new FCC rule dropping the data-rate restriction of ‘300 baud’ on the HF bands, replacing it with a 2.8 kHz bandwidth limit, has finally been published in the Federal Register, and will take effect on January 8, 2024. So not quite the Christmas present we expected, but Happy New Year!
And a FNPRM (Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking) clock is ticking for comments on how to handle data rate/bandwidth of the VLF, VHF and UHF bands. That spectrum is not covered by the new HF data bandwidth rule.
Finally, no news on the Netflix Watch. HRN Episode 506, How Can We Podcast with All This Light?, is still dark due to Netflix’s copyright complaint. Check Episodes 506 and 507 for details, and listen to the audio version while the video is down.