Congresswoman Debbie Lesko (AZ-08) introduced The Amateur Radio Communications Improvement Act (H.R. 3241) on May 11, 2023, to require that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) eliminate the obsolete HF digital symbol rate limit with a 2.8 kHz bandwidth limit.

After being petitioned by ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio® in 2013 (RM-11708) for the same relief, in 2016 the Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (WT Docket No. 16-239) in which it agreed that the HF symbol rate limit was outmoded, served no purpose, and hampered experimentation. But the Commission questioned whether any bandwidth limit was needed in its place. Most amateurs, including the ARRL, objected to there being no signal bandwidth limit in the crowded HF bands given the possibility that unreasonably wide bandwidth digital protocols could be developed. Since 2016 there has been no further FCC action.

In his editorial in the April issue of QST, David Minster, NA2AA, ARRL CEO pointedly said that we’re in for another ARRL dues increase. This is being followed up by a membership survey on what these dues increase will look like.

Now, personally, I don’t have a problem paying a little more. Costs increase, meaning that prices generally have to be raised. I can pay an extra $5 or $10 per year for my ARRL membership. A lot of hams, however, are going to view this as another reason to quit the ARRL, and the ARRL is going to take another membership hit.

I’ve been writing about ARRL membership issues for years. I may not be an expert in this field, but I can tell you that declining membership is not a good thing. I can also tell you that raising dues—while it may be a good, short-term financial strategy—is not a good, long-term membership strategy.

Not all of the crises that hams respond to are weather-related or natural disasters. Sometimes they are of a deeply human and personal nature. This sort of emergency response is the apparent expertise that has been developed by the West Bengal Radio Club which takes its mission of public service seriously in this regard. Acting once again as a quasi-social service agency, they came to the aid of one woman who was taken from Bengal to Jammu and Kashmir at an early age for a marriage at 14 that separated her from her family.

The National Commission for Women, a government entity that advocates for women, had been trying to assist her in tracing the family she had lost touch with after marrying into a Kashmiri family. The media reports said that the woman, who is now 24 years old, was originally brought to the Baramulla sector in Jammu and Kashmir to be married because her father was unable to bear the expense of raising four children at home.