Page 13 - Volume 20 No. 6

Tale
by John Loughmiller
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Ham Radio operators formerly using the spectrum). Just apply, check a few boxes promising to be good little boys and girls, and abide by Federal radio regulations. As soon as you got a piece of paper with your call sign in the mail, you were good to go.
Other than the time spent filling out the application, and payment of a nominal fee, that was it.
Then what?
A few docile people did apply and were given call signs to be used faithfully (the equivalent of marking the side of a drone with a registration number). Shortly thereafter, some operators were rewarded with nasty letters from the FCC when they were caught violating some rule, such as failing to identify or re-identify their station with their assigned call sign within the mandated time period. Or perhaps they – horrors – allowed a non-family member to use their family radio system or allowed a non-employee to use their business system.
Whatever, fines were threatened, so it soon became obvious to even the most law-abiding person that it wasn’t in an operator’s best interest to request a call sign or let anyone know their true identity on the air. Big Brother was listening.
Citizens rebelled and stopped applying for or using call signs. In fact, they adopted something called “Handles”, in place of official call signs, which were often colorful names, such as “Bandit” in the Burt Reynolds movie or perhaps an X-rated variant.
No one applied for licenses because human nature has two motivators: pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of pain. Of the two, the latter always prevails over the
JUNE 2016
TWIN & TURBINE • 11