<grumble, grumble, grumble> And there are those that complain when I cut and paste instead of posting a link <shaking head>
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This reply posted by Fred Marks, link supplied earlier in this thread

Barret. This is your voice speaking! Your voice is the AMA Frequency Committee. The committee is made up of very active modelers. Some of us are getting a little long in the tooth, having represented you very ably for over 25 years. Bob Underwood commended us as "the only standing committee of the AMA" at our meeting in 2003 at Toledo. I enjoyed the chuckle when I commented that "it was barely standing." At 70 , I am younger than several on the committee. When I joined the committee in 1978, Jack Albrecht, Walt Good, Bob Aberle, Dick Jansen, John Strong, Ed Lorentz, and one or two others were in the traces looking for "young blood" to help come up with new frequencies for modelers. That committee had moved the RC world from being limited to those who had ham licenses to the availablity of six license free frequencies at 26-27 MHz, to the addition of 7 new frequencies at 72 and 76 MHz.

Bob Aberle chaired the committee from about 1980 to 1982. My assignnment in 1981 was to assemble a presentation to the seven FCC Commissioners of our petition for 80 new frequencies at 72-73 and 75 MHz. That was done in Dec 1981 and Jan 1982. Walt Good, Bob Underwood and I made the trip to FCC and I made the presentation. The FCC voted unanimously without further technical question to assign the 80 frequencies exclusively to model use. From time to time, you will hear misguided claims that we share those frequencies. That is hogwash, they are exclusive for our use. The misinterpretation is that we are a secondary user. That means we must not interfere with other users of adjacent frequencies. There has never been one report or complaint of RC equipment interfering with any other service.
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In 1982 George Myer became chairman and in 1983, I was directed to assume that position where I served until 1986. Since that time, Bob Underwood as AMA Technical Director and, later, in a consulting role, has acted as de facto chairman. During 1982 to 1986, some major issues were tackled and solved in outstanding fashion by the committee. First, the phase in plan that kept us out of trouble as new equipments were developed was put in place. Jack Albrecht authored that outstanding plan that we stuck with through 1991 to its logical completion. Part of that is the frequency flag/pin system in use at most RC flying fields.

Members of the RC Industry made no contribution except for Jack Albrecht but were most emphatic that the AMA provide guidelines for the development and introduction of equipment that would let operation proceed safely in this new, narrowband environment. My son Tim and I develped what we caled "generic FM receivers" and demonstrated to the members of the AMA Executive Council what it would take to operate your models on a flight line within 10 or so feet of each other in an environment that included multiple users 20 KHz removed and in massive combinations up to 50 (at 72 MHz) of third order intermodulation. I drafted the Guidelines with much assistance from the technically oriented members of the committee. Those Guidelines have appeared in the AMA Handbook over the years, updated and edited by an absolutely excellent technical editor, Warren Plohr. In addition to Warren and Jack, Bill Hershberger, the quiet genius, and George Steiner the noted writer for RCM played major roles. The Guidelines were issued in 1986 to the industry. Industry struggled with those requirements for a few years and the phase in plan and grandfathering old equipment until 1991 delayed full utilization of the band for RC airplanes. In order to ensure safety, the committee initiated the "Stickering Program" whereby some 25 organizations were certified to be able to measure the spectrum of your transmitter and classify it as narrow band or broad band. You have to have narrow band equipment to operate with 20 KHz separations. The issue of receiver performance is a little more complex, so it is suggested that you open www.fmadirect.com Support/Technical papers and read about receiver performance.

The AMA faced one mighty challenge to our spectrum some ten years ago when a minor functionary at FCC got into a little game he called "refarming the frequencies" that was patently aimed at looting spectrum for his associates in the wireless world. His nefarious plan would have placed some strong radiators within 5KHz of our frequencies. Once more, the committee went to work tooth and nail. It would be much easier now with the Internet, but we opened up a massive letter writing campaign to the Congress and to the FCC. That effort brought "refarming" to a screeching halt! Once again, our frequencies were safeguarded by AMA with the help of conscientious AMA members.

The committee meets regularly, always at Toledo and occasionally at other times to consider items that might affect our use of the spectrum we enjoy as a privilege. About two years ago, the issue of BPL began to arise. The committee with assistance of AMA legal council and a loose liason with the ARRL reviewed and commented very strongly against allowance of BPL.

There are a few things very direct and not too difficult to understand about BPL. Your committee has gleaned these understandings and I simply state them, not as committee pronouncements, but rather as what I believe I have heard and read. However, these are almost absolutes.

1. BPL is a money maker for the wireless industry, nothing more and nothing less. There are a few who stand to make huge amounts of money. They also make huge campaign contributions and have heavy lobbying budgets.
2. Those people do not care in the slightest that they might interfere with other users, including public safety services.
3. The present FCC chairman is in the pocket of this group. He and his boss in the White House are the big cheer leaders for BPL, touting it as a way to bring the Internet to rural America. So who needs 100 more spam messages per day?
4. The power companies are willing pawns in the fight, seeing just one more source of revenue from the power lines that have free rights of way across your property.
5. The power companies already use such transmission schemes to communicate with sub stations and the like and readily admit that they have huge problems with the scheme.
6. About BPL:
a. Transmission is made over local feeder and distribution lines. High lines are not used. Why? No money to be made transmitting from one substation to another. It has to come in to your neighborhood.
b. Why not use BPL to interlink all power networks to provide automatic sensing and control so we can avoid massive blackouts and fight terrorism? Uh uh; no money in that. These folks want that $30, $40; $50 and going from each family. Lets see now, 400 million Americans in about 100 million families @ $40/month/family=you get the picture? Yes, our piddling billion per year worldwide RC industry is like a voice in the wilderness. I suspect that one Commo business has more lobbying budget for BPL than the yearly budget in toto for AMA.
c. What is bad about BPL? All other communications equipment has to comply with FCC Regs as spelled out in the Federal Code of Regulations (FCR) Part 15. Let me assure you, just about all but the real cheapy RC systems perform well in the Part 15 environment.
d. At present, BPL is being demonstrated in a number of locations on local distribution lines. The range of spectrum being used is 29 to 36 MHz or about that. Nothing is being run at 72 Mhz. However, BPL is allowed to operate at up to 80 Mhz. It is our assessment that receivers such as our FMA FS5 and FS8 will likely not be bothered by BPL, so watch all claims of other solutions to BPL with a jaundiced eye. Tests being run by Dan Williams using the FS 8 show no interference with BPL nerby and operating at 33 tp 36 Mhz. However, plans are in work to repeat the tsts with that equipment set up to be at 36 MHz where BPL is operating. This step is even more important for our modeling friends in Europe that fly on 27 MHz, 35 Mhz, 36 MHz, and 40 Mhz.
e. The worst part of BPL is that the wires serve as the antenna. Other Part 15 users have to have very specific antenna characteristics while BPL is a real piece of guess work. We have only seen one set of purported radiation pattern and that came from AT&T.
f. In Europe, the EC has issued grants of over $25 million Euros to examine the effects of BPL. The Bush administration has spend zero, zilch, nada and couldn’t care less. They are looking after us just like they did the flu vaccine!
g. The second tough technical issue is that we have been unable to get FCC or the BPL community to define a baseband modulation that could tell us what to design against.


7. What is the AMA doing?
a. First, it has been clear all along that the Bush administration and Powell of the FCC are going to let BPL go ahead, no matter that AMA, ARRL, and numerous other users of the spectrum have lodged strong protests. That is there in this weeks approval of the NPRM despite all protests.
b. We have few alternatives:
i. I have been requested by the committee to become involved in the IEEE Standards Association to help write standards for BPL that might possibly help us to exercise some control. I attended a meeting in June and another in July at which I succeeded in getting the category “Compatibility With Other Wireless Communications” (that’s us) in the outline for the standard. I wrote a synoptic outline that was presented in a meeting last week. The next working session is scheduled for Jan 2005. This thing moves so slowly that we may have a standard by 2010! This all takes infinite patience and is a lot of work.
ii. Bill Hershberger keeps tabs of regulatory matters and legislation that may have some effect.
iii. Bob Underwood and our AMA attorney have just about exhausted our options for protest through normal government channels.
iv. We simply haven’t the money to hire powerful lobbyists to go after congress to have them force the FCC to take a different track.
v. We can all vote in Nov. for a change of administration that gets Powell out of the FCC and someone the who listens to us as the chairman, Dan Cuelo, did in 1982. Let’s see, the last election was decided by a lot less votes than AMA membership, so let’s show them what happens when you cross a bunch of modelers!
vi. The committee may meet before Toledo to review and examine other action. Right now, it may be best to see if there is going to be a change to an administration more friendly to the needs and rights of our people than to big business.
vii. The fall back, if Bush/Powell continue in office, is to gear up for a head on protest through mail, and Internet to Congress and the FCC.

Barret, I guess that tells you we are doing all that reasonable people can do. If you have suggestions, we are open to them, shy of rioting and shooting people! If willing, I have an assignment for you! We need to draw every national association in with us and ARRL to attack this thing. I could use some help with that chore that has not been forthcoming from AMA HQ or our attorney. The strongest pitch I have made, in June, was in response to the “big money” gang that “all they needed were safety standards to protect people installing the BPL on power lines”. My little speech concluded with: “You are concerned with safety. Where does safety begin and end? Yes, the 50 lb P51 Mustang I watched fly at the local field yesterday would be very dangerous if BPL interfered. But, even worse, let us assume that you and your family are driving on a highway, involved in a serious accident, and EMS does not reach you because BPL interfered with emergency communications. You and al your family die as a result. That was enough to get that section added to the IEEE Standard. You may rest assured that it will take everything we can muster to keep that in the standard. We have to have some more associations involved in order to avoid being outnumbered 28 to2 (The chap from ARRL and me)

As usual, the RCMA was happy to hold our coat while we conducted the defense. No help, no input, just wait for AMA to solve the problem so the RCMA members can go on taking $ from here to Asia. I am just telling it like it is. Buy American!

There have been quite a few AMA members who have been active members of the Freq Committee over these 26 years that I have been involved. I want to express my personal appreciation to them for their many contributions: Bob Aberle, Bob Novak, Pete Waters, Jack lemon, George Steiner, George Myer, the late Chuck Ahearn who solved the issue of resolution bandwidth for transmitter calibration, Jim Oddino, Warren Plohr, Bill Hersberger, Jack Albrecht, Walt Good (first and foremost), John Strong, Torrey Williams, Dick Jansen, and most recently, Dan Williams and Tony Stillman. The support of Dave Mathewson in recent years is greatly appreciated. The support and attendance of my son Tim is a real blessing. Without these fine folks, you would not have the marvel of RC as we now know it.