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 Previous: Surfin': QRP'ing With Vigor |  Next: Youth@HamRadio.Fun: A Journey of Nothing But Fun |
By David Sumner, K1ZZ
ARRL Chief Executive Officer
February 1, 2003
It's become a cliché for almost any sport to be referred to as "a game of inches." It's easy to understand the difference an inch makes when a bat strikes a baseball or a golf ball approaches a cup. Progress on a football field can come down to a matter of inches. An inch can turn a thrilling auto race into a tragic spectacle.
While the difference between success and failure in influencing public policy sometimes hangs on the thinnest of margins, as on the playing field, when we say it's a game of inches we mean that progress is most often made in small steps, not in grand leaps. To invoke a further cliché, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step--but you never reach your destination unless you follow that first step with another, and another, and another....
So it is with easing restrictions on amateurs who want to install reasonable antennas on their own homes. As land use regulations became ever more restrictive in the 1970s and early 1980s the ARRL fought on two fronts: on the legal front by assisting individual amateurs who took meritorious cases into court, and on the public policy front by assisting in the drafting of reasonable local ordinances and regulations and in seeking federal preemption. We achieved a major breakthrough in 1985 when the FCC adopted its "PRB-1" declaration of limited preemption of local and state regulation of Amateur Radio. Thanks to PRB-1, amateurs' success rates improved not only in court but also in avoiding costly legal battles in the first place. Since 1985, amateurs' patient efforts have led to 16 states adopting statutes to codify or elaborate upon the basic PRB-1 protections.
Helpful as it was, PRB-1 did nothing for the growing number of homeowners and prospective homeowners who are saddled with private covenants prohibiting the installation of antennas. Arguing that the federal interest in amateurs having effective antenna systems was just as strong in areas afflicted with covenants, we pressed the FCC to take the logical step and extend PRB-1 to those areas. In December 2001 the Commission said in effect, "We will if Congress tells us to." We followed the Commission's suggestion and in less than five months found a sponsor for legislation to do just that. During the final six months of the 107th Congress 35 cosponsors signed on, 90% of whom are returning to the 108th Congress. So, while it may seem as if we have to start all over with the new Congress, in fact we're well ahead of where we were a year ago. There is every reason to expect the bill will be reintroduced in the House early in 2003 while we shop for a sponsor in the Senate.
Legislative sponsors and cosponsors don't just happen. Last year, hundreds of ARRL members asked their elected representatives to support HR 4720 (which will have a new number when it's reintroduced). Led by President Jim Haynie, W5JBP, ARRL volunteer officials and staff visited scores of Congressional offices to tell our story. Not all were immediately receptive; there is an understandable desire to keep the federal government out of private contracts, so we carry a heavy burden of proof that the public interest requires such legislation. Changing public policy means changing minds one at a time. And so we progress, inch by inch.
The same sort of patient approach is called for on other public policy issues, including the all-important protection and enhancement of our access to the radio spectrum. The ARRL maintains a four-person Technical Relations Office in the Washington area under the direction of Technical Relations Manager Paul Rinaldo, W4RI, and with additional support from General Counsel Chris Imlay, W3KD, and the ARRL Lab in Newington. Paul and his team, which consists of Walt Ireland, WB7CSL, Jon Siverling, WB3ERA, and Administrative Assistant Ana Campa, spend most of their time preparing and reviewing documents and attending meetings with government and industry representatives. For example, as reported in Happenings this month, Paul was a member of the US delegation to the ITU Conference Preparatory Meeting (CPM) in Geneva and was chosen from 1000 delegates to chair the ad hoc group that dealt with the details of the 7-MHz issue. Again, this didn't just happen; it resulted from countless hours of work over a period of years to earn the confidence of the leadership of the US delegation and other key participants in the CPM.
The ARRL staff in both Washington and Newington also devote time to supporting volunteers who represent the International Amateur Radio Union at ITU meetings. As a result of this teamwork between volunteers and staff, Amateur Radio is represented in Geneva as effectively and with as much polish as any other radio service. Through your ARRL membership and your voluntary contributions to the ARRL Fund for the Defense of Amateur Radio Frequencies you're an important part of the team.
Process is important, but results are what really count. In 1996 the ARRL led the opposition to a grave threat from so-called "little LEO" satellites, whose commercial proponents refused to put the amateur 2-meter and 70-cm bands off-limits in their quest for additional spectrum. As recently as WRC-2000 they were lobbying vigorously for more spectrum to serve their projected 55 million customers. That projection proved to be as illusory as we predicted on this page in September 1996. The same CPM Report that offers six different methods for addressing the 7-MHz realignment issue identifies just one method for dealing with little LEOs: "No additional allocation."
Even in a game of inches, there can
be misses by a mile.
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