----- Original Message -----

Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 2004 7:54 PM

Subject: Re: LF: Trans Atlantic

Hi All,

Further to Mike's comments, it is also useful to appreciate the strength supplied by our not inconsiderable sympathy among the commercial interests lobbying the regulators.

From my personal experience of a number of years active as an officer of a trade federation, the amateur bands in general often come up for discussion as they are eyed enviously by commercial interests. These discussions are often influenced in our favour by the presence of licensed amateurs among the ranks of professional business interests.

We enjoy privelages and facilities - in particular, bandwidth and emitted power levels, which are denied other services who pay very dearly for what they get.

It doesn't help those guys who often go to bat on our behalf when some individual or group of mavericks destroy our credibility by riding roughshod through the rule book.

With the growth of commercial useage of the spectrum, there has not been a proportionate increase in the licensed amateur population. It follows then that the proportion of licensed amateurs among the growing army of professionals has not grown and, therefore , that part of our lobby is a diminishing resource!

This is true in spite of the fact that radio amateur licences are virtually given away these days. Someone has recently said the hardest part of getting a licence these days is filling in the form!!!!!

If the STANDARD required to get a licence years ago was applied these days you would be able to count on one hand the number of active radio amateurs TODAY.

Most radio amateurs today are appliance operators and not experimenters and a lot of would be radio amateurs are using mobile phones and the internet. This approach is probably a lot cheaper and facilities like ECHOLINK and others similar are as good as the real thing and you do not have propogation to worry about, its 59 all the time.

Even dedicated experimental radio amateurs are contributing nil these days of any interest to would be commercial users.

The sophisticated nature of electronics these days and the cost puts the radio experimenter at a disadbantage, only the commercial operators and government agencies can afford meaningful research then market it at a price that is affordable to the appliance operator.

For instance, you could not construct all the ingredients required to build a desktop computer or a modern transceiver for the purchase price, and secondhand they are virtually give away.

The days of the valued experimental radio amateur have GONE. Maybe if I was starting today as a young person interested in electronics I would become an appliance operator, no need to solder anthing these days, just throw the thing away and get another.

de Mal/G3KEV

Please don't make it harder for those that remain.

73 de Pat g4gvw