What's on Your Mind

[InbetweenDreams]

So some of you might know that I dabble in amateur radio. Amateur radio is a more conservative group of people, at least it seems so in the US. I didn't want to make a thread about this issue specifically so I thought I would put it here. Here's a couple things, one I am disgusted I heard this over there are and while I'm not totally surprised to hear this out of people it is most definitely *not* in the spirit of amateur radio and depending on your interpretation of the FCC rules may even violate Part 97.113 in that it is obscene language. Not that they're saying bad words on the air but they're referring to shooting people with a gun and blowing up ballot boxes. This is the same night I made an announcement that a youth leader who is staying in the area with middle school aged children was going to try to make contacts with some ham radio operators while they were on their trip, our "net" started before they were back but there is always a chance that other people might be listening. The obvious problem is that yeah they were making jokes and weren't being serious, this is not appropriate in my opinion for amateur radio and the fact that they think this good stuff to joke about says a lot about their character as well.

That being said, the FCC has this to say in Part 97 section 113 about what you're not allowed to transmit (this is in layman's terms because TL;DR)

- Communications that result in profit (you can't use amatur radio for monetary gain)
- Music (except for a few cases where you're communicating with the ISS)
- No broadcasting (one way communications, re-broadcasting TV, etc)
- Communications intended to facilitate a criminal act, encoded or encrypted messages, obscene or indecent words or language or false or deceptive messages.

Here's what was said, after which I turned off the radio and went on with New Years Eve...

"Oh, just a few minutes ago there was shootin' outside and Larry and I'm wondering if maybe there was a democrat running down the street and people were taking shots at him, I don't know if that's actually true or not. *laughts* Something going on, it's calmed down now. It didn't sound like firecrackers, it sounded like gunshot. So ugh yeah, this is a pretty conservative neighborhood so I don't know. Anyway this--with that net control this is (call sign redacted) back to you sir"

"Well they don't need to run him into my neighborhood if it was one because there's a few people down the road that's going to light him up *laughs* I can tell you that. But anyway that sounds like a pretty good generator you got there--I hear, there's fireworks going on I don't know if they're shooting them off you know in (location redacted) in the city but I heard some pretty good booms. Maybe they're blowing up those absentee ballot boxes over in Georgia they really need to, that election might come out like it's supposed to have if they'd blow up some of those ballot boxes there. But anyway, that 50 amp service on that is pretty good and wattage sounds really good..."

I want your opinion, my intent is to raise a little cane tonight, especially given light of the recent events in our country.