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www.southgatearc.org
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FCC to drop Morse testing for all amateur radio license classesIn an historic move, the FCC has acted to drop the Morse code requirement for all Amateur Radio license classes. The Commission today adopted a Report and Order (R&O) in WT Docket 05-235. In a break from typical practice, the FCC only issued a public notice
at or about the close of business and not the actual Report and Order,
so some details - including the effective date of the R&O - remain
uncertain. The public notice is located at, http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/ Also today, the FCC also adopted an Order on Reconsideration, in WT Docket
04-140 - the "omnibus" proceeding - agreeing to modify the Amateur
Radio rules in response to an ARRL request to accommodate automatically
controlled narrowband digital stations on 80 meters in the wake of rule
changes that became effective today at 12:01 AM Eastern Time. The Commission
said it will carve out the 3585 to 3600 kHz frequency segment for such
operations. "This change eliminates an unnecessary regulatory burden that may
discourage current Amateur Radio operators from advancing their skills
and participating more fully in the benefits of Amateur Radio," the
FCC said. The ARRL had asked the FCC to retain the 5 WPM for Amateur Extra
class applicants only. The FCC proposed earlier to drop the requirement
across the board, however, and it held to that Perhaps more important, the FCC's action in WT Docket 05-235 appears to put all Technician licensees on an equal footing: Once the R&O goes into effect, holders of Technician class licenses will have equivalent HF privileges, whether or not they've passed the 5 WPM Element 1 Morse examination. The FCC said the R&O in the Morse code docket would eliminate a disparity
in the operating privileges for the Technician and Technician Plus class
licensees. Technician "With today's elimination of the Morse code exam requirements, the FCC concluded that the disparity between the operating privileges of Technician Class licensees and Technician Plus Class licensees should not be retained," the FCC said in its public notice. "Therefore, the FCC, in today's action, afforded Technician and Technician Plus licensees identical operating privileges." The wholesale elimination of a Morse code requirement for all license classes ends a longstanding national and international regulatory tradition in the requirements to gain access to Amateur Radio frequencies below 30 MHz. The first no-code license in the US was the Technician ticket, instituted in 1991. The question of whether or not to drop the Morse requirement altogether
has been the subject of often-heated debate over the past several years,
but the handwriting has been on the wall. A number of countries, including
Canada, no longer require applicants for an Amateur Radio license to The FCC said today's R&O in WT Docket 05-235 comports with revisions
to the international Radio Regulations resulting from the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU) World Radiocommunication Conference 2003
(WRC-03). At that gathering, delegates agreed to authorize each country
to determine whether or not to require that Typically, the effective date of an FCC Order is 30 days after it appears in the Federal Register. That would mean the Morse requirement and the revised 80-meter segment for automatically controlled digital stations would likely not go into effect until late January 2007. The ARRL will provide any additional information on these important Part
97 rule revisions as it becomes available. Source: The American Radio Relay League
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