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Alexander, DL4NO's avatar

VArAC 11: There are some very nice and welcome features, with the exception of the email gateway. I think this is extremely dangerous and superfluous.

First: If you can do VarAC, you can also do Winlink.

Second: These days, criminals intensively use new technology. The VarAC email gateway would be a great way to send emails anonymously with hardly any possibility to trace the writer!

To play devil's advocate: Someone sets up a 500 EUR shortwave station, makes up call signs and distributes access data for Web sites with child pornography. Suddenly a swat team storms the house of the radio amateur...

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Justin AB3E's avatar

Excellent comments Steve! The repeater coordination one may elicit some spicy responses haha.

If the ARRL filed it must have been too late to be posted by COB on the 11th. Very curious to read their comments and if they mention 219 MHz.

In general I was very disappointed by the other comments. They generally fell into a few categories:

1. Fellow amateurs copy-pasting pleas to not change a single thing in Part 97 (this was probably 60-70% of the total comments). It's really a shame so many didn't stop to think that this might be an opportunity to improve our hobby. To be clear, I didn't see any commercial interest in our spectrum in the comments.

2. Business trade groups begging to be able to robocall and text spam people again

3. Anti 5G people (no clue what that had to do with deleting regulations but man did they come in hot and heavy). I'll lump the anti smart meter people in here too.

4. GMRS people really mad they can't have linked repeaters. Some of these same people were advocating for a no-test "Novice" amateur radio license that grants you limited privileges. Maybe this makes me an elitist ham, but I'll be filing reply comments against that. The Tech exam can be taken online now and is in no way a barrier. Also I'm pretty sure testing is required by treaty.

5. Tons of stuff about LPFM ownership and operating requirements I didn't quite understand since I'm not in that world. There were those both for and against changes

There were several good amateur radio ones, yours included. Hopefully we get some good results!

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