Dear ARRL Member,

On March 12, 2025, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Public Notice titled “In Re: Delete, Delete, Delete,” seeking input from the public on FCC rules that may be outdated, unnecessary, or in need of modification. This inquiry is part of the FCC’s ongoing effort to alleviate regulatory burdens across various services, including the Amateur Radio Service.

As part of this review, ARRL is conducting a thorough examination of the provisions in Part 97 and related rules that affect amateur radio operators. ARRL’s written comments, which will be prepared by our FCC Counsel and the ARRL Executive Committee, will include consideration of feedback we received from members.

Members who want to share comments and concerns about this matter are urged to share your feedback directly with ARRL. Please submit your comments by March 31, 2025 and use the following feedback form:

www.arrl.org/fcc-public-notice-march-2025

ARRL will submit our official filing to the FCC by the April 11 deadline. After that, there will be an opportunity for reply comments at the FCC until April 28, and then later, opportunities for public comment on any rules the FCC proposes to delete or modify.

While the FCC Public Notice is a broad inquiry that does not single out any specific radio service, ARRL is nonetheless committed to protecting the Amateur Radio Service, promoting its public interest goals, and ensuring your right to access radio spectrum.

ARRL will continue to work on this matter, and we will inform members as more news develops.

Thank you,

73

ARRL Executive Committee

Amateur Radio station WX4NHC is located at the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, Florida. The station has been totally assembled from donated equipment and is operated by an organized group of volunteer amateur radio operators since 1980. Read about its history.

WX4NHC activates whenever a hurricane is within 300 miles of landfall in the areas of the western Atlantic, the Caribbean or the eastern Pacific. The team of operators also provides emergency backup communications from NHC to NWS Offices and other agencies in case of local landfall. The NHC operators work in conjunction with the Hurricane Watch Net, VoIP WX-Talk Hurricane Net and other volunteer networks to collect real-time surface reports for the NHC hurricane specialists via amateur radio using many modes such as HF and VHF/UHF voice, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) systems, EchoLink and IRLP, and Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS). Input also comes from two non-amateur volunteer weather observer networks–ON-NHC (Observers Network), and CWOP (Citizens Weather Observers Program), using on-line reporting, email and fax. WX4NHC also relays hurricane advisories via the amateur radio nets to the hurricane affected areas and governmental agencies when conventional means of communications have been interrupted.

Observers’ surface reports provide the forecasters with supplemental weather and damage data that are not normally available to them and are frequently incorporated into their advisories as they provide a human perspective and eyewitness accounts of what people are experiencing during a hurricane. The WX4NHC team has been nationally recognized for its volunteer international humanitarian efforts by the National Hurricane Conference and the South Florida Hurricane Conference.

Your club is planning to staff a table at a local community fair or event. Offer to send radiograms. Recruit volunteers to explain what a radiogram is and, later, send the messages. Who in your radio club is active on the traffic nets? How many members know the radiogram format or know how to send a radiogram message on the air? Fear not! Your club can put its best foot forward and hold an amateur radio message fair with minimal traffic-handling skills using an exciting new tool: the Radiogram Portal!

Jonathan Taylor, K1RFD, inventor of EchoLink, has developed a web-based tool that the public can use to enter a short message by following simple instructions. The message will be picked up by a participating amateur radio volunteer operator (called a “radiogrammer”) who logs in to a restricted portion of the website, takes the message off the gateway, and sends it over the air on a National Traffic System (NTS) net for relay to its destination. The recipient will get a local phone call from a nearby ham. Along the way, ham operators will relay the messages by voice, digital, or even Morse code and get valuable practice in emergency public service.

“It’s not a problem if your club lacks an active traffic handler to check into the traffic nets,” says Phil Temples, K9HI, who chairs the ARRL EC-FSC NTS subcommittee. “You merely set up a laptop at your message fair using a Wi-Fi connection and allow members of the public to enter their own messages. Later, a skilled traffic handler in your area will pull the message off the portal and send it in a timely fashion.”

The Radiogram Portal was successfully demonstrated at the 2024 New England Division Convention. An extensive display sponsored by the Nashua (New Hampshire) Area Radio Society highlighted the NTS and the Radiogram Portal running on a computer, along with a trifold that pictured the NTS2 website, the NTS Letter, training videos, and a downloadable handout available for clubs and public gatherings.

For more information on the Radiogram Portal, visit nts2.arrl.org/radiogram.

By Phil Temples, K9HI