The ARRL has a problem

[ericbarbour]

The ARRL, the largest and oldest ham-radio organization, is having the worst governance crisis in its history. I have seen almost no media reports about it. Only Bruce Perens has posted detailed info. Apart from qrz.com forum, attempts to bring this up on ham-radio forums usually result in deleted threads and banned users.
https://perens.com/static/ARRL/Transpar ... r2018.html

There's really not much else online. And no surprise: the ARRL is denying everything and engaging in ad-hominem attacks. Also no surprise, lots of hams are blindly supporting the League.
https://wireless-girl.com/AlarmingARRLchanges.html
https://forums.qrz.com/index.php?thread ... xt.595579/

There was a Slashdot thread, which generated more than the usual traffic. Mostly because Perens is a prominent figure in the open-source world.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/18/10/0 ... ct-at-arrl
As someone said there:

I have this mental image of today’s hams belting each other with canes and oxygen tanks...

We could always start a deadpool on how much longer amateur radio will continue to exist. (political comment here, skip if you wish) The current FCC has shown great willingness to toss a century of legal precedent in the trash, mostly to please corporate interests. And there are wireless companies who would love to get their hands on the amateur-radio band reservations--especially the 10-meter, 2-meter and 70 cm bands. Nothing the FCC does would surprise anymore.

Go ahead, try searching for "ARRL" on news.google.com. Nothing about this--just a constant river of official ARRL press releases about one thing or another.

[Strelnikov]

I have this mental image of today’s hams belting each other with canes and oxygen tanks...

There are two kinds of ham radio operators now: the younger people who use VHF/UHF walkie talkies as an adjunct to their other hobbies like rockclimbing in 4x4 jeeps, and the old coots on shortwave. And that's on radiotelephony; I haven't done PSK31 and the other low-power digital modes, but you will probably find the younger people using that instead of Morse code or talking, because it involves computers. 10 meters is split between old-timers, truckers illegally freebanding with Connex radios (especially the ones that can work narrowband FM), and the younger licensed people who have the same Connex radios in their cars.

We could always start a deadpool on how much longer amateur radio will continue to exist. (political comment here, skip if you wish) The current FCC has shown great willingness to toss a century of legal precedent in the trash, mostly to please corporate interests. And there are wireless companies who would love to get their hands on the amateur-radio band reservations--especially the 10-meter, 2-meter and 70 cm bands. Nothing the FCC does would surprise anymore.

That means screwing over the radio manufacturing businesses of China and the US. That's a lot of inertia to overcome, and Ajit Pai is not loved for his net neutrality stunt.