This is Bob, VK4BOB, with news from Far North Queensland.
The Cairns Amateur Radio Club and the Tablelands Radio & Electronics Club are getting together on Saturday June 10 for field day operations activating a couple of VKFF parks locations .
Each site will have members from both clubs sharing their expertise and equipment, offering the experience to members who haven’t worked portable yet. We will be on the various HF bands depending of course on conditions.
We will be using the club callsigns of VK4CNS and VK4WAT plus the personal callsigns of each of the operators. Keep an ear out for us on Saturday June 10, swing your beams northwards, and keep an eye on the VKFF Facebook page for the latest info.
Hello, I’m Geoff Emery, VK4ZPP, and I’ve been thinking.
Amongst a number of the operators there seems to have been a sense of relief at the news from the ACMA that the commercial outsourcing of licence provisions will be ending. Whether it has been the ideological standpoint of various governments or the small number of applications that has brought this to a climax, we just don’t know.
In the years of long ago, the attitude was that the amateur radio service was a training ground for people who could take a recreational interest in radio and electronics into various areas of the community where their skills could be further developed and put to benefit of the wider populace.
About 3 or more decades ago, the idea was prevalent in the halls of power, that everything had to have a price which was based on a cost recovery in money terms.
The intangibles were left out as they could not be quantified and thus many not-for-profit activities in the community could no longer receive “favoured” treatment of discounts and other benefits. The thought that the government was subsidising things that had no direct monetary value was shocking but as we have seen, things like the provision of services written off the government books such as welfare to certain groups has passed to the voluntary sector which then had to employ staff and operate on handouts or “grants”.
Somewhere in this melee, the 14,000 odd radio amateurs dropped or were disinherited of their status as worthwhile community benefactors and taxes were applied to their licences. Just because commercial interests could be milked for revenue meant that, in the bureaucratic or political mindset, it was fair to sting the person who was investing time and money to improve communications capacity in his region.
Similarly, the cost recovery model has seen this country with quite high entry costs with government fees and charges when compared to many overseas practices.
Perhaps we will see the procedures for getting and keeping an amateur radio licence move on-line where the costs over time are flattened and the fees can better represent the value of our contribution rather than reflect some notional costs to the regulator.
We need to see a concerted effort at recruiting people into AR and modernising the face, the entry structures, will surely assist this. If the costs of getting a licence are more modest, then this will be another incentive that we can promote.
Now is the time for a practical approach with considered plans to be placed before the ACMA. Much of the work has already been done and the submissions from the WIA form part of the record for the regulator. It seems sad that in many ways, the structure of our regulator seems to preclude those with the technical expertise and who work in the field, from helping promote amateur radio within the organisation.
The old PMG seemed much more responsive when the Radio Inspectorate included many licensed operators from different services.
So I hope that we will see a realisation that we can and do deserve better consideration in the future.
I’m Geoff Emery VK4ZPP and that’s what I think....how about you?
