chuck wrote in :

Or are you
suggesting that "open" versions of the type-accepted marine
radios are no longer type-accepted?


Hmm....Sorry I didn't see this sooner. We had Riley Hollingsworth, Chief
Council for Amateur Radio of the FCC Enforcement Division at our hamfest
last weekend. I could have put this question to him.

My feeling is that any radio that will transmit out-of-band for a
particular service PROBABLY is no longer acceptable in the eyes of the FCC,
especially radios designed to be operated by non-technical
operators.....taxi drivers, firemen, cops, boaters, etc. The entire reason
the radios are type accepted this way is to prevent these radios from
interfering with other services they are not licensed to transmit on.

I do, however, think all Marine HF radios should be channlized in such a
way that they CAN transmit on the ham radio marine defacto net channels,
for use in emergencies, such as 14.300. The Icom M-802 has this channel,
and others, in the ham bands but will not transmit on them until you open
the transmitter up, probably in violation of some FCC regs.

Mr Hollingsworth's speech was most interesting at the hamfest. Ham radio's
greatest threat, right now, is Broadband Over Powerline interference, which
just wipes out whole ham bands in the HF spectrum from use anywhere it has
been implemented. This should also be of interest to boaters in distress
as ham stations monitoring the maritime ham nets won't be able to hear your
distress calls over the racket from the local power company broadband
internet provider. How stupid and awful. They zap a cable operator if his
coax radiates, but not some big bribing power company conglomerate. Go
figure....follow the money?