FCC cites amateur for failure to ID

[Sonwatcher]

FCC cites Pennsylvania radio amateur for failure to ID

(Jan 3, 2007) -- The FCC's Philadelphia Field Office has issued a formal Notice of Violation (NoV) to a Pennsylvania radio amateur for failure to identify in a timely manner. The Commission released the NoV to Andrew Ban, KB3GRK, of Feasterville, on December 20. The notice says that on September 12 and 13, 2006, an agent of the FCC's Philadelphia office monitored KB3GRK's transmissions on 439.850 MHz and observed that the operator failed to identify for nearly one hour in one instance and for more than 20 minutes in the second. §97.119(a) of the Amateur Radio Service rules requires stations to identify "at the end of each communication, and at least every 10 minutes during a communication." The FCC has advised Ban that he must submit within 20 days a written statement addressing the alleged violations and action taken to preclude recurrence. The issuance of an NoV appears to be a departure from the FCC Enforcement Bureau's typical practice of addressing such alleged infractions with an advisory letter rather than a formal notice.
http://www.arrl.org/?artid=7087

 

[Drifter]

FCC cites Pennsylvania radio amateur for failure to ID

(Jan 3, 2007) -- The FCC's Philadelphia Field Office has issued a formal Notice of Violation (NoV) to a Pennsylvania radio amateur for failure to identify in a timely manner. The Commission released the NoV to Andrew Ban, KB3GRK, of Feasterville, on December 20. The notice says that on September 12 and 13, 2006, an agent of the FCC's Philadelphia office monitored KB3GRK's transmissions on 439.850 MHz and observed that the operator failed to identify for nearly one hour in one instance and for more than 20 minutes in the second. §97.119(a) of the Amateur Radio Service rules requires stations to identify "at the end of each communication, and at least every 10 minutes during a communication." The FCC has advised Ban that he must submit within 20 days a written statement addressing the alleged violations and action taken to preclude recurrence. The issuance of an NoV appears to be a departure from the FCC Enforcement Bureau's typical practice of addressing such alleged infractions with an advisory letter rather than a formal notice.
http://www.arrl.org/?artid=7087

Yet another reason why I have no interest or in any hurry to use my Ham ticket. They are so petty and heavy handed over there. The informer monitoring could have given the guy a friendly reminder about identifying himself :!: Then again there might be more to this story. Long live 11meters

 

[cyclops1970]

"an agent of the FCC's Philadelphia office monitored KB3GRK's transmissions on 439.850 MHz and observed that the operator failed to identify for nearly one hour in one instance"

Hey, you want the ticket, you agree to play by the rules. One hour without ID is inexcuseable.

 

[Drifter]

I guess No one is listening Riley . See a few words of wisdom from the man himself in quote, and I still think a friendly reminder would have gone a long way. I thought Ham Radioing was a Hobby.

he noted, radio amateurs still could be more courteous and less
inclined to fly off the handle at some perceived on-the-air offense.
“You need to lighten up and not embarrass the Amateur Radio Service,” Hollingsworth
advised. “All of us make mistakes,

 

[N8ATS]

if the operator the guy was talkin to in this instance was following rules he did have a reminder. about every 10 minutes or less. if a person hears someone id'ing every 10 minutes and this goes on for an hour the rx station id's minimum 5 times. if he cannot figure this out then he deserves the violation. not heavy handed just common sense.

 

[park]

I got a letter a couple of years ago from a officail observer (someone with toooo much time on their hands) that I transmitted out of the 20 meter band. I had not been on 20 meters in years ?

 

[K8PG]

ID violation-10min time

Well the FCC is out and monitering good deal you want to be an amateur radio operator Follow the Rules! You never know who is listening. With attitude like that you can stay on the
Childrens Band and PLAY

NO Official Observers do not have to much time on there
hands .The program is to help fellow amateurs who may have
technicle problems and to help find fragrent violators and
and to keep the Bands Clean.Iam an O.O. and proud of it
if your in violation of thr rules you might get a post card with
a friendly reminder of your stations operating (Good opr.Rpt)
or some infraction of the R&Rs that needs to be looked at or
corrected.

DE K8PG Paul CW LIVES -SKCC#118
O.O. The Sky has not fallen :usa

 

[Sonwatcher]

It was brought to my attention on another forum that the freq. involved is an ATV frequency. Amateur television. I did a little research on how to ID on an ATV frequency.

Identifying your call letters is the same as any other mode in Amateur Radio - every 10 minutes during long transmissions and at the end of every transmission. With ATV, You can simply speak your call on the sound subcarrier or the easiest is to make a sign with your call letters on it that can be plainly seen on the wall behind you in the shack.f you want to get fancy, insert in the video cable between the camera and transmitter one of the OSD video overlay boards with your call. You can even overlay GPS data - latitude longitude, heading, speed, altitude and time - along with with your call letters

http://www.hamtv.com/

It would be interesting to know if the official was listening to the sound only and not viewing the picture. In that case it is possible the call sign was in sight if one was actually viewing the picture and not just listening to the conversation that was going on at the same time.

 

[C2]

ATV is interesting. Around here, there is a local ATV repeater that transmits an image almost around the clock. The call for the repeater is plainly visible, but at the same time, there is clearely NO 2-way conversation going on.

How is that legal?

 

[Sonwatcher]

Maybe "conversation" was the wrong word. I should have said the Audio being transmitted with the picture.

 

[C2]

I appreciate your POV on this particular incidence.

I'm just wondering in a more general sense about what I observe. This is in context of every response in this thread.

There is this letter of the law and spirit of the law issue that I cannot quite resolve when ATV (and possibly other digital coms) are involved.

The particular repeater does not receive or transmit audio. In this case, how do you define "communication?"

They do have cross-repeat capabilities, however, and the net conrol operator uses a variety of bands for audio.

I'm just thinking in context of the uplink freq as well as what get broadcast on the 70cm ATV band.

 

[Sonwatcher]

From what I have gathered, if the audio is transmitted on a 4.5mhz subcarrier frequency the video ID is legal. There are 2 modes of audio that can be used to transmit with the ATV image. One is "on-carrier audio"-

Audio is added to the picture by a subcarrier module. The module outputs a 4.5 MHz signal, which is then injected in to the video modulator circuit of the TXA5-5. The 4.5 MHz signal is frequency modulated by the audio information. Deviation of this unit is set to +/- 25 kHz with a 75-microsecond pre-emphasis curve, the same as broadcast TV. On the PC Electronics unit, there are both microphone and line-level inputs....With on-carrier sound, the picture carrier is narrow-band frequency modulated with the audio information. Using this method, as long as there is a picture present you should be able to recover the audio. This makes on-carrier sound very good for DX work.

The other is "subcarrier audio"-

The most common method of transmitting sound is by a subcarrier. The output of the subcarrier generator, such as the PC-Electronics FMA5, is a 4.5 MHz signal, which is frequency modulated by the audio.

http://www.wa2fnq.com/atv/atvdoc.htm

If he was transmitting video on 435.350 and his voice was at a +4.5 mhz subcarrier that would have put his voice transmission at 439.850 which is where the FCC monitored him.

From what I have read the viewers of the ATV image can hear the transmitted audio but communicate back to the operator transmitting via 2m radio. I may be wrong but there appears to be audio capeabilty.

This is just a thought thrown out on my part. It's hard to know what actually took place with the very limited information the FCC shared.

 

[Sonwatcher]

Well,he was not working ATV. I got an email from him. He said he is highly embarassed by the situation. He said he didn't want to say much at the moment but he is only set up for APRS and Voice.

 

[K8PG]

Everyone is lible to make a mistake

Hello:

When I was a Novice back in 1972 i was out of the Novice band 1 time by a few 100 Hz or so and got a letter of violation
its no big deal he needs to reply in triplicate and explain what happened and thats it End Of Story.If hes a new ham we need to mentor new folks and stress the rules,and engineering of the ststion.Lets help these new folks and welcome them and teach them the ropes-73

DE-K8PG Paul CW LIVES

 

[C2]

One thing I was thinking too.

I bet there will be several techs that end up using USB with their rigs set to 28.5 MHz.

I'm still not sure how the ATV repeater here gets away with broadcasing an image with it's call sign 24/7. I suppose when it gets an input, it switches over, but that still locks down the limited ATV bandwidth around here.

HamTV told me that I cannot transmit on that repeater output freq anyway.