By Dave Jensen, W7DGJ

Radio was still a hot, new technology when the US Government first got involved in regulating the airwaves. It was 1910, and the Roberts Bill was circulating through the hallways and meeting rooms of Washington DC. Congress wanted some kind of regulation to control all wireless communications, and that bill would accomplish this by creating two classes of licensed stations -- government and commercial. While it didn't explicitly outlaw amateurs, the Roberts Bill considered any other radio activity to be nothing more than interference to those two classes. This looked as if it could put the amateur experimenters out of business -- but there was only one amateur who called for action.

Hugo Gernsback, publisher and radio experimenter himself, saw the writing on the wall and decided that he needed to get involved -- and quickly -- in order to salvage what he could of the airwaves for his fellow enthusiasts. It's true that some amateurs caused major headaches to both the burgeoning commercial market as well as the US Navy stations. Because many of the first radio operators were young, there was indeed some horseplay on the air. (If you can remember what it was like being a teen with a cool new toy, you'll understand that clowning around did occur.) But Gernsback knew that if amateurs were forced out, radio would lose the driving force behind new ideas and future technological advances that would improve the medium for all parties.

Gernsback's publication, Modern Electrics, published an editorial about Representative Robert's (R-MA) bill in January, 1910, and requested that readers write Congress with petitions showing that amateurs had an important place in radio. More than 8,000 letters showed up in DC, and in testimony Hugo and others were able to fend off the attack by proving that the bill would "throttle these radio boys" and that Government had no right to impede their efforts to develop new radio technologies. 

Thus, 1910 marked our first major success in defending the spectrum against incursions by government. While it stopped the regulators for a time, Gernsback's success acted only as a two year pause in regulations that would later come back to change the face of radio entirely with the Radio Act of 1912. The sinking of the Titanic brought the subject of interference up again in Congress, and radio amateurs were moved exclusively to bands that appeared useless at the time. Our history shows that these early experimenters made great strides with their "worthless" spectrum as shortwave radio proved its usefulness in long distance communications.

Spectrum defense began as a critical field, one that continues to this day in the USA (and internationally) via the efforts of the American Radio Relay League (ARRL). In this issue of T&E, we will get into some interesting discussion on past and future concerns for spectrum along with the lawyer and ham operator who manages this effort from Washington, DC.

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David Siddall [K3ZJ] has been serving the ARRL as its Washington Counsel since 2019, through DS Law which he founded in 2011. He's the perfect source for this topic, as his work has involved spectrum management going back to key roles he had at the FCC. At that agency, K3ZJ served a variety of positions over the years, including as Chief of the Spectrum Policy Branch and Legal Advisor to a Commissioner for wireless, technology, and international matters. At the time he was the only licensed ham serving as Commissioner-level staff. I enjoyed a meeting with Dave last month, and during that call learned a great deal about the various stress points in the spectrum held by amateurs.

Dave was very respectful to those who had gone before him, and we spoke for a few minutes about the early history of spectrum defense: "Spectrum is at the core of the ARRL. While it was Gernsback in 1910 who successfully defended against the Roberts Bill, it was Hiram Percy Maxim in 1914 who defended our spectrum from the Navy; and after WWI, Maxim got us back on the air again despite the Navy’s objections. You've got to hand it to those pioneers, they correctly read the tea leaves at a time when there really wasn't a lot of access to what was going on. Still today, a lot goes on that we don't read about, but the ARRL is constantly connected to those who determine spectrum use both domestically and internationally." The league has also achieved international successes through the work of Jon Siverling [WB3ERA]. Dave told me that John works exclusively for the ARRL and is an expert in ITU and its associated WRC matters. WB3ERA handles the international spectrum issues that continually surface to endanger the amateur spectrum bands, including many that have been nipped in the bud.

As a former Washington lobbyist who worked with legislators for a decade on a variety of cutting-edge wireless and spectrum issues, Dave has the kind of clout necessary where there are requirements both in technical radio expertise as well as a savvy knowledge of the inside workings of the governmental agencies that affect spectrum matters. As we all know, things are quite polarized now politically, and the ARRL has quite a job to stay neutral on political matters while working with those on both sides of the aisle to protect amateurs’ interests. Dave not only has worked for both sides in his professional civil service capacity, but has held political appointment staff jobs for both as well.

"In the 1990's the FCC was more technical than political. But over the past several decades polarization inevitably seeped into the FCC. Actually, I saw it beginning in my days there, but it's become increasingly entrenched. Luckily, ARRL continues to have help from officeholders of both political parties, and it is absolutely critical for amateurs that the League stay out of the fray.” 

“I ran spectrum allocation during some of my years at FCC, and for a time was the highest ranking licensed radio amateur at the agency," Dave told me. "But now there are far fewer amateur licensees at the agency overall, and since 2019 there have been none in the Wireless Bureau directly charged with writing the Part 97 amateur regulations. So ARRL is working now with staff who are not as familiar with amateur radio as in the past."

The Commission must balance our needs with those of commercial cellular, satellite, maritime, aircraft, and all the other services that use spectrum. "They're fair to us and overall do a good job of it, but sometimes it’s hard to get across the continuing uniqueness and importance of our voluntary service in developing new technologies, serving as critical back-up during disruptions to commercial services, exploring scientific ways for things such as to protect our astronauts from the emissions of solar storms, and invigorating student interest in and exploration of wireless technologies that is absolutely essential to the continued competitive success of our nation."

Dave noted that for years he's promoted FCC job openings to the amateur community but that it has been a difficult task. He has even unsuccessfully looked to hire an attorney with knowledge of Washington’s ways and the amateur service to help him out. (If any of my readers are in law or policy and have a desire to make a difference, please write me and I'll forward it on to K3ZJ.)

Use It Or Lose It

As the demographics change in the amateur radio services, one of my concerns has been that there are frequencies which just seem to be going out of fashion. In an earlier editorial, I wrote about my feeling on how 2 meters looks from this location. As you know, many amateurs begin with a Technician class license and a Baofeng radio or similar. If you do that here, you'd be asking yourself very quickly "Why is there no one talking?" because the analog frequencies are often dead air. While this is different in every location, the idea of "use it or lose it" resonated with Dave Siddall in our conversation as there are examples of spectrum being underutilized (at least for the moment).

Dave emphasized “for the moment," noting that there are exciting new digital technologies that could turn 2m back into one of the most heavily-used bands. “That is the magic of ham radio technological development, and why historically sometimes amateur radio has developed technologies and means that then are adopted by the commercial sector rather than the other way around. For example, think about how everyone now has a small wireless device in their pockets, and remember that the first implementation of wirelessly transmitting computer data that I know of originated with a ham – KA9Q -- who disagreed with his bosses at Bell Labs that such functionality would be useless and on his own used amateur radio to experiment with those capabilities well ahead of any commercial development." 

Dave reminded me that there there is no time clock or budget limiting what can be done in amateur radio. "Development is driven by ideas and passion but sufficient spectrum for such experimentation is absolutely essential,” he stated. Another example is cubesats – small satellites that were first designed and flown by radio amateurs. Today many commercial LEO satellites are cubesats.

Disappearing Spectrum

The threat of losing spectrum remains very real. It's relatively easy for some other service or entity to put an SDR on one of our bands at a specific location and argue that it is underutilized. It's the same with recording some of the antics on frequencies like 7.200. . . these could also contribute to a feeling that the amateur spectrum can be put to better use. “Some hams think that cleaning up our frequencies is the job of the FCC, and they are wrong. It's our job," said Siddall. Readers will remember that Hiram Percy Maxim from his earliest days in QST urged operators to follow federal regulations, arguing that only responsible behavior would allow operators to keep their frequencies and public legitimacy. Maxim emphasized that “amateurs must obey the law if they expect the law to protect them.” Even today, the ARRL has a volunteer monitoring program, a significant effort led by former FCC Enforcement Bureau staffer Riley Hollingsworth, [K4ZDH]. (This program operates consistent with a Memorandum of Understanding between the FCC and the ARRL that was authorized in 1982 in an amendment to the Communications Act sponsored by Barry Goldwater, K7UGA.)

A good example of how amateur access to spectrum can disappear is the 3.3 - 3.5 GHz band, which has been available for amateur radio and is often picked up by our experimenters. It's an interesting range of frequencies because even low power can travel significant distances and handle a great deal of data. That's why it was of interest to the cellular world as 5G entered the picture. David and the team at ARRL were able to fend off the cellular industry and keep most of the band for now on a secondary, non-interference basis. The 3.45–3.5 GHz segment was repurposed by the FCC for flexible use and 5G effective in 2022. The loss of this segment highlights the increasing competition for radio spectrum. That's why it is critical to expand what we do into as many varied frequencies as we have available. This improves our value overall to the ARS and at the same time broadens our expertise as radio operators. David recounted that FCC staffers were flabbergasted when he explained that some amateur radio operators have directly communicated with stations as far away as Europe using 3.3 GHz frequencies by bouncing their signals off the lunar surface.   

Another example of spectrum defense showed up recently on the 1.25 meter band. Amateur Radio lost a significant portion of this band in 1988 after UPS decided it wanted to have a communications service there and convinced the FCC that their proposed use would be more intensive and valuable than that of the amateurs.  In that case we were able to keep a significant portion of the band (222 MHz to 225 MHz) exclusively for amateur radio. But we were unable to recover the 2 lost MHz even after UPS failed to utilize it, and the League has vigorously defended the remaining band. Dave has had to coordinate solutions for interference when experimental licensees have been permitted by the FCC to operate in this spectrum. Experimental licensees generally are permitted to access the exclusive spectrum of others (that’s why they are “experimental”), but only on a strict non-interference basis.  This usually is not a problem when the experimental licensee has good spectrum expertise and awareness -- which many have -- but sometimes an entity without sufficient expertise obtains such a license and amateurs have to react to defend our frequencies.

"We had an experimental licensee in the Los Angeles area who was oblivious to on-going amateur activity and their RF took down the Southern California repeaters set up on 1.25 meters. The affected hams got the local FCC involved to find the source, and back here in Washington we were able to talk with the licensing staff to try to prevent such problems in the future. In this case the cause was a defense contractor using those frequencies to develop a type of radar to identify drones flying low over sensitive military sites. Developing such equipment clearly is important to national security, and if successful the equipment will operate out of our band on military frequencies. But the military frequencies could not always be made available to conduct the needed testing and demonstrations.  As a result of our work, they must now coordinate their use with local amateur contacts for those repeaters and additionally maintain a phone number that will be answered during all testing so that testing will cease if it interferes with amateur operations. Working with the ARRL, the FCC has now been putting this coordination requirement right into licenses in black and white."

What's Up for the Future of Spectrum Defense?

I avoided a lot of discussion with Dave about the well-known success of spectrum defense, such as cleaning up 40 meters from commercial European stations, or the addition of all the WARC bands in 1979. Clearly, some of these were especially important to us in today's amateur radio. What seemed important in closing my discussion with K3ZJ was more about the tools that he uses to make headway with the FCC and legislators. We've heard about what works against us . . . that is, our lack of use of some frequencies and some misuse of other frequencies, but I wanted to know more about what Dave considers to be the big artillery in the fight against spectrum reallocation. (As an aside, see photo at left from 1986 showing Senator Barry Goldwater [K7UGA, SK], Dave Siddall [K3ZJ] & the FCC Chairman Mark Fowler.  Sen. Goldwater is about to present Fowler the ARRL Handbook that is sitting on his desk).

"We need to continue to concentrate on technical innovation and on emergency preparedness," Dave told me. "Those are the big issues that resonate with any agency official or legislator and I know that it will have an impact. While amateur radio has recreational uses as well, that doesn't buy us much. It's only through reminding them that we serve both a technical development role as well as provide the public with a backup for emergency communication. Even the highest government official who knows nothing about amateur radio will know that these are community benefits with public importance." 

73 for now! (Click here for Forum Discussion)

Dave, W7DGJ