The §1.401 Inbox in the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System occasionally gets blessed with Petitions for Rulemaking regarding amateur radio.  Everything from license class restructuring to people upset because they lost the opportunity to get an extra class call sign is tn there.  Very few see the light of day, be assigned an RM number and get on the public notice for a 30 day comment period.   Two ham petitions re

Anyone with a telephone (wireless, wired or otherwise) should be now accustomed to our modern culture where you are getting calls from scammers.  Many times, these are automatic dialers that will call you and play a message, usually in a synthesized voice.  These calls will sometimes claim to come from Social Security or from Internal Revenue Services.  They will threaten you with an arrest warrant or like the one that I got the other day, cancel my social security number.  

A recent Facebook post on 100 Watts and a Wire triggered a debate on the claims that IP-based linked amateur radio systems like Echolink are not "real" amateur radio and that for it to be true radio, it must be a complete radio connection without the use of any terrestrial facilities such as wireline or IP.

Radio, historically has had used different forms of "non-radio" in order to connect people. For many years, many public safety providers have used wireline links to connect a dispatch console (control point) at a police or fire department to a hilltop 2-way radio site. Broadcast stations, have used a mix of radio and wireline methods of establishing studio to transmitter communications. The early national radio networks (i.e. NBC, CBS) were AT&T phone lines. Are these things not "radio"? 

On the "I Love AM Radio" Facebook group, a member posted a poll about whether a format consisting of "anime soundtracks" and video game music would work on AM or FM radio.  For the uninitiated, anime music is from Japanese animation.

In response to Dick Taylor's blog "Automation Killed The Radio Star" and the subsequent discussion on The Broadcast Club on Facebook.

The narrow formatting of American radio is what killed the radio star. There are simply too many stations and formats. More group owners who see radio as nothing more than just a billboard with music to keep people entertained between the ads.