SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the *-*.*-.*-**.*-**.-*-.-.**-.*-*.***.*.-*.*-.-.-.*-* dept.
This week the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed The Ham Radio Parity Act -- a huge victory for grass-roots advocates of amateur radio.
This will allow for the reasonable accommodation of amateur radio antennas in many places where they are currently prohibited by homeowner associations or private land use restrictions... If this bill passes the Senate, we will be one step closer to allowing amateur radio operators, who provide emergency communications services, the right to erect reasonable antenna structures in places where they cannot do so now.
The national ham radio association is now urging supporters to contact their Senators through a special web page. "This is not just a feel-good bill," said representative Joe Courtney, remembering how Hurricane Sandy brought down the power grid, and "we saw all the advanced communications we take for granted...completely fall by the wayside."
(Score: 5, Informative) by NCommander on Sunday September 18 2016, @08:14AM
KD2JRT reporting in. Quite happy to see this for one as ham radio has a long history in helping emergency responders in true disasters (we have RACES and ARES for example), as well as provisions in the act to allow hams to do general emergency communications in times of war. Most mobile rigs will run happily off car batteries or marine batteries for hours at a time if not more, and those are easy to swap out and replace.
For the most commonly used ham bands, building the necessary antenna is not very difficult or large, but for good performance, it needs to be outside, and generally visible for line-of-sight. My big problem is that apartment owners tend to be unreasonable in allowing things to be setup in any 'visible' way, probably concerned mostly over appearance and such and unwilling to work with hams to build unsightly or attractive antenna arrays.
Still always moving