A few decades ago, I was one of a handful of people included in a Special Temporary Authority (STA) permitting the use of spread spectrum on the ham bands. It was astonishing to me how much opposition from the ham community itself we encountered trying to get that exception to the rules approved.
I think to a large extent we could get the FCC rules brought into at least the previous century, if not this one, by a concerted effort to get them changed. But in general, hams in the USA don't work together, and we have no national organization in favor of getting such changes made, so that is not going to happen.
Some day I would hope we would be able to do something about that.
In the meantime, both STAs and the Experimental Radio Service are legal ways around the stupid rules we have to contend with. Both require a lot of paperwork.
But that's enough of USA rules problems; this is an international mailing list and I'm often encouraged by what people elsewhere are doing. Keep up the good work, folks. - Brian
PS: in Southern California, 70cm is so eaten up by military radars and other transmission stuff that it's really not very usable for anything beyond FM voice repeaters anyway.
On Fri, Sep 01, 2017 at 10:55:11AM -0700, Tom Hayward wrote:
In the context of data emissions (like we would expect on this mailing list), it's because the USA rules are so limiting. Every new technology is an exercise in squeezing into the old rules. This method of packing data into an ATV transmission--which is the one exception for high bandwidth on 70cm--is engenius.
And yes, it is no wonder most innovation takes place in other countries given the limits imposed on lower frequency data transmissions in the US. Tom KD7LXL