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+ Available on ARRL Audio News
Things may be changing for the better on the Amateur Radio enforcement front. The FCC announced this week that all Amateur Radio-related enforcement investigation, evaluation, and processing has been transferred to the Compliance and Information Bureau. The change, effective September 1 but not announced until more than three weeks later, was made "by internal arrangement" between the CIB and the FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. The Wireless Bureau handles amateur licensing and, for the past several years, has coordinated enforcement with the CIB.
The FCC said the main objective of the change was to "facilitate the Commission's pursuit of compliance," especially in the area of resolving interference complaints, a hot-button issue within the amateur community.
"Amateur enforcement should have gotten more direct attention over the last few years," conceded Riley Hollingsworth, K4ZDH, the CIB's legal advisor for enforcement. "A lot of people think the FCC doesn't care."
Hollingsworth will be the FCC's point man in handling the complaints. He says FCC Chairman William Kennard "wants greater respect with respect to enforcement" at the FCC. Putting enforcement in the CIB's hands should mean "a much faster, more effective response," he said.
ARRL General Counsel Chris Imlay, W3KD, says he's "cautiously optimistic" that the change will improve the dismal amateur enforcement situation. "Now, CIB doesn't have to just gather evidence and forward it to another bureau," Imlay said. "It can act on it when it is ready. That's a good situation compared to where we were."
The FCC's public notice said the CIB staff now handles Amateur Radio enforcement matters "from initiation to resolution." That includes complaints, amateur testing issues, warnings, monetary penalties, revocation hearings, and "in extreme cases" equipment seizure and prosecution through the Department of Justice.
The Wireless Bureau continues to handle Amateur Radio licensing, including new applications and renewals, as well as all Amateur Radio policy and rulemaking matters. The change is expected to have no impact on the Amateur Auxiliary. Hollingsworth said the change could, in fact, mean that the FCC will work more closely and more effectively with amateur volunteers in dealing with enforcement issues.
Under the new arrangement, all amateur enforcement questions and complaints should be directed to the Compliance and Information Bureau, Compliance Division, Attention: Amateur Complaints, 1919 M St, Mail Stop 1500E1, Washington, DC 20554.
The FCC also has instituted an "Amateur Enforcement Line" at 202-418-1184. The automated system prompts callers to leave a name, a number, and a brief message. The CIB will return the call within the next business day.
It appears certain that action in Congress on HR 3572--better known as the Amateur Radio Spectrum Protection Act of 1998--will be postponed at least until next year, when a new Congress will be in place. Even so, the ARRL and League members have continued to press for consideration of the measure during the current session. The bill--sponsored by Rep Michael Bilirakis of Florida--has garnered 74 cosponsors.
The projected early October adjournment date for the 105th Congress has become a moving target as the House attempted to juggle its efforts to complete the major appropriations bills, wade through the charges and countercharges in the ongoing investigation of the President, and find time for some politicking before the November elections.
New additions to the list of cosponsors for HR 3572 include Representatives Neil Abercrombie of Hawaii, Carolyn Kilpatrick of Michigan, Carolyn McCarthy of New York, Sam Farr of California, Owen Pickett of Virginia, Charles Stenhold and Gene Green of Texas, and Rod Blagojevich of Illinois.
For a full review of the bill along with a sample letter to Congress, see "DC Currents," QST, June 1998 or H.R. 3572: How You Can Help. -- Steve Mansfield, N1MZA
FCC Commissioner Susan Ness recently gave amateurs some cause for optimism. In remarks prepared for delivery September 23 at the Personal Communications Industry Association of America's PCS '98 in Orlando, Florida, Ness promoted the notion that some spectrum should be kept off the auction block. The value to the public of certain spectrum uses "does not always translate into pure economic terms," Ness declared.
"For example, we need to ensure that adequate spectrum is available for public safety purposes, for unlicensed--that is, Part 15--uses, for the Amateur Service, and for experimental and scientific purposes," Ness said. "None of these needs would be met if auctions displaced judgment in the spectrum allocation process."
Addressing the topic "Blueprint for Spectrum Management," Ness said auctions work well but are not a substitute for the allocation process. The FCC, she said, must not back away from its fundamental duty to allocate "in accordance with the public interest."
The complete text of Commissioner Ness's remarks are available on the FCC Web site at http://www.fcc.gov/Speeches/Ness/spsn815.html.
After devastating several Caribbean ports of call and clobbering the Florida Keys in late September, Hurricane Georges had already worn out his welcome, but he wasn't yet out of steam. Georges spent a weekend regaining strength in the Gulf of Mexico then headed for shore. Heavy rains and high winds along the Gulf Coast, including the Florida Panhandle, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, presaged the storm's landfall early on September 28 near Biloxi, Mississippi.
The storm packed 105 MPH winds, but gusts of up to 176 MPH were reported at Keesler Air Force Base at Biloxi. Rain totals of 30 inches or more along the hurricane's track caused extensive Gulf Coast flooding. Tornadoes spawned by the storm struck shelters in Mississippi but no one was hurt. Concern for flooding prompted the evacuation of more than 1-million people from New Orleans and vicinity. However, the storm and its copious rainfall veered more to the east, sparing "The Big Easy."
The FCC declared a communications emergency in Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas to clear frequencies on 40 and 75 meters for emergency and health-and-welfare traffic. Mississippi Section Manager Malcolm Keown, W5XX, said hams in Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana cooperated in their storm response.
"Disasters don't stop at section lines," Keown said. "It's been a very good cooperative effort, so this has been a very good demonstration on how folks can get together and make it all work." He says hams also worked with the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross. Keown says many Mississippi repeaters were linked for the first time as well, so hams throughout the region could participate in the emergency response on VHF and UHF.
Only last week, Keown said, hams in Mississippi held their Simulated Emergency Test that included a mock response to a storm similar to the one actually occurring this week.
Alabama Section Emergency Coordinator Joey Carter, AE4WP, reported that Mobile and Baldwin counties were the hardest hit. He said more than two dozen tornado warnings went up in Alabama on September 28. The Alabama Emergency Net on 3965 kHz has remained active. Continued flooding and power outages were reported this week in Alabama.
"We have had a lot of folks helping out on the Emergency Net, and that has been a blessing," Carter said. "We're getting good information back that we are able to send to the National Weather Service."
In Northern Florida, SEC Nils Millergren, WA4NDA, reported shelters opened in several counties. More than 3000 people in Escambia County alone took refuge. Escambia is the state's westernmost county. A VHF net was opened for West Panhandle District traffic. Flooding has closed some highways and bridges. ARES was reported available for emergency communication to the western panhandle counties.
The storm recovery and cleanup were gearing up by week's end along the Gulf Coast, even as some flooding continued to plague the region.
Storm cleanup and recovery also was under way in Puerto Rico, which suffered heavy damage and several deaths at the hands of Georges. Hams there have continued to help, especially in areas where conventional communication was knocked out. ARES member Victor Madera, KP4PQ, reports thousands still in shelters, but "FEMA and Red Cross are doing wonders!" Most amateur storm recovery activity in Puerto Rico has been on VHF, he said. "Power is back in about 50 percent of the island," he reported earlier this week. Central Puerto Rico was the worst-affected region because of the mountainous terrain. Power lines knocked out there have been difficult to reach to repair. Telephone service was spotty in some parts of the Commonwealth.
When Hurricane Georges was downgraded to a tropical storm, the Hurricane Watch Net on 14.325 MHz was finally able to end its marathon operation. "Our business is done," said Net Manager Jerry Herman, N3BDW, as he got word of the storm's new status September 28. "It went well."
The Hurricane Watch Net remained active for about 10 days straight, passing weather-related information via W4EHW at the National Hurricane Center in Miami as Georges moved from the Caribbean to the Gulf of Mexico.
The lengthy operation took a toll on net control operators, who became scarcer as the storm refused to quit. Herman said the net operated nearly around the clock, although 20-meter propagation was lost during nighttime hours. "It was a long haul for our operators," he said. "Every time I thought we were about ready to run out of operators, some more folks would just jump back in there and do it again."
Herman called Georges "a really unique storm that just kept going." Georges expended his final burst of energy during the last few days of September, dumping heavy rain along the Gulf Coast.
The Hurricane Watch Net formed in 1965 after Hurricane Bestsy. The Net's relationship with the National Hurricane Center dates back to 1970, during Hurricane Alan. Herman says the Net welcomes help from newcomers, but net "regulars" go through a regular training program. To find out more, contact Jerry Herman, N3BDW, e-mail jherman@smart.net. In the meantime, Herman says he's grateful there is not another storm on the horizon.
Insomniac hams in the Western US might have witnessed the effects of a startling cosmic event in the wee hours of August 27. And those hams' logbooks may hold information scientists want.
For five minutes, starting at 1022 UTC on August 27, HF propagation changed dramatically for the Western US and Pacific area. "It was as if night was briefly turned into day in the ionosphere," said Stanford professor Umran Inan, leader of a research group that observed the event. That means that your 40 or 80-meter DX QSO may have suddenly faded away, and, for a short time, you could have worked DX on 20 or 15 meters, or maybe even higher frequencies, in the middle of the night.
On HF, Inan said the MUF should have risen to daytime levels for about five minutes. Inan said he'd very much like to hear if any hams noticed the effect.
The cause was a tremendous burst of gamma-rays and X-rays coming from a newly-discovered star type some 15,000 light-years away. The burst of radiation from the distant star was powerful enough to boost the level of ionization in Earth's upper atmosphere from nighttime to daytime levels, according to the Stanford research group.
This was the first time that such a change in Earth's environment has been attributed to an event so far away. The star that emitted the burst is a magnetar, a superdense neutron star with the most powerful magnetic field ever found in the universe, a magnetic field strong enough to rip atoms apart.
The gamma and X-ray burst "lit up" Earth's ionosphere. Along with the burst a cloud of subatomic particles spewed from the star's surface at nearly the speed of light. Those particles spiraled around the magnetic field lines and emitted microwaves.
At the National Science Foundation's Very Large Array (VLA) radio telescope in New Mexico, astronomer Dale Frail, working with Caltech researchers Shri Kulkarni and Josh Bloom, detected the microwaves emitted by this cloud of particles at frequencies ranging from 1.4 to 8.4 GHz, and made a "movie" of the cloud as its radio emission brightened, then faded away.
The radiation burst affected the ionosphere over the Western US, but the Eastern part of the country was in shadow, so hams in the East would not have experienced the strange propagation effects. For more information, see the National Radio Astronomy Observatory's Web site at http://www.nrao.edu/pr/magnetar.html.--Dave Finley, N1IRZ
Propagation prophet Tad Cook, K7VVV, Seattle, Washington, reports: Solar activity was down a bit last week, with the average solar flux off by six points and average sunspot numbers lower by almost 27 points.
Now that September is over it's time to look at some long term trends. The last quarter of 1997 had an average solar flux of 94.3. The next quarter--January through March of 1998--the average flux rose to 98.8. The second quarter of this year the average flux was 107.8, and this last quarter the average flux was 129.2.
The average flux for September was 137.7, and for May through August it was 106.7, 108.5, 114.1 and 136. The average flux over this past week was 125.6, and for the same period one year ago it was only 88.2. We can see that the general trend in solar activity is up, although there was only a negligible increase from August to September.
Last week the really active geomagnetic day was on Friday, when the planetary A index was 121 and the planetary K index went as high as 9, which signals a major geomagnetic storm.
Over the next few days, Friday through Sunday, the solar flux is forecast to be 115, 113 and 112, and the planetary A index for the same period is predicted at 20, 20 and 15. Unsettled to active conditions are predicted around October 15 and for October 18-23 as well. The solar flux is expected to rise after the weekend, to above 130, then drop down to 120 around October 12-14, then peak around 145 around October 20. Now that we are in the fall season, look for good HF propagation when the K and A index is low.
The October 1998 issue of the magazine Astronomy has a couple of items of interest to solar observers. Page 28 has a stunning picture from the NASA Transition Region and Coronal Explorer spacecraft showing loops of plasma from an active solar region on April 25. The same issue on page 60 has an article about forecasting solar storms titled "Blowin' in the Solar Wind."
Sunspot numbers for September 24 through 30 were 156, 118, 115, 87, 127, 86, and 59, with a mean of 106.9. The 10.7- cm flux was 135.4, 122.1, 126.9, 135, 122.5, 115.9, and 121.5, with a mean of 125.6, and estimated planetary A indices were 28, 121, 14, 12, 6, 10, and 8, with a mean of 28.4.
Ohio State Government Liaison Paul Krugh, N2NS, of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, died unexpectedly. September 20. He was 58. In addition to serving as an assistant director in the Great Lakes Division, Krugh was a member of the ARRL Public Service Advisory Committee and a volunteer consulting engineer. He was an ARRL Life Member with 29 years of continuous membership. Krugh also volunteered for the Red Cross and was an ARES member. He retired from American Electric Power in 1996. Survivors include his wife, Judith, and two sons.
The ARRL Letter is published Fridays, 50 times each year, by the American Radio Relay League--The National Association For Amateur Radio--225 Main St, Newington, CT 06111; tel 860-594-0200; fax 860-594-0259. Joel Harrison, W5ZN, President; David Sumner, K1ZZ, Executive Vice President.
The ARRL Letter offers a weekly summary of essential news of interest to active amateurs that's available in advance of publication in QST, our official journal. The ARRL Letter strives to be timely, accurate, concise, and readable. The ARRLWeb Extra at http://www.arrl.org/members-only/extra offers ARRL members access to late-breaking news and informative features, updated regularly.
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