IARU vs CW: International Amateur Radio Union and the Interests of CW Operators

The International Amateur Radio Union is not an organization that radio amateurs can join individually. It consists instead of its member “national societies”, of which it generally allows only one organization per country.

Back in the early days when it was created perhaps this was not a problem, however, the so-called national amateur radio societies, especially the major ones, degraded over the years, sometimes even into corruption and with dwindling membership.

The major national societies that dominate the IARU are the ARRL (United States of America), RSGB (United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland), DARC (Federal Republic of Germany) and JARL (Japan).

Other smaller ones are also members, such as WIA (Australia), MARTS (Malaysia), ARSI (India), CRAC (China) and so on. Let us be clear: big and small is not the number of members but the financial contribution to IARU:

IARU receives its funds from 10% of all of the income of these ‘national societies’ and of course, hard western currency counts for more. Thus, these “big members” dominate the IARU in its activities.

Radio Amateurs increasingly did not see the need to join national societies, and the magazines of these major societies increasingly have diverted away from traditional amateur radio and its attractions into computing.

This leaves the Radio Telegraphist (A1A Human CW Operator) almost completely unrepresented by the various national societies. Publications rarely feature CW and their websites often don’t have any section for CW interests.

In the light of all this, it should be no surprise that the national society officials are rarely CW operators at all: a look at the IARU Region 3 officers shows that they are all but one “FT8 users” and not CW operators at all.

The few that do consider themselves CW operators, are not to be found in any form of traditional on-air CW QSO, but rather only in “DX Pile ups” and other “5NN TU” activities, often with decoders and computer keyboards.

Therefore it should also come as no surprise that they do not represent the interests of A1A Operators and are likely not even aware of them. They do, of course, however lobby for ever increasing bandwidth for digital modes.

Clearly the IARU is long out of date, since the majority of the major national societies listed above have long had corruption issues. The obvious solution is a World Telegraphy Union with direct membership worldwide.

This is not a small undertaking and a subject for possible future discussion, however such a Union is evidently required in order defend the rights and interests of A1A Operators worldwide.

Meanwhile, the WIA attempted to slip in a horrific “global band plan” for 40m, which would have removed CW from all of the band except the bottom 25kHz. This ludicrous policy proposal was published quietly on WIA website.

Fortunately, one A1A Operator in Australia saw it, and raised the alarm via his popular YouTube channel, and a deluge of indignation descended from around the world, much of which we took part in organizing.

Due to this pressure alone, the plan was dropped to exclude CW from 40m above 25kHz, and in fact to expand the CW “exclusive” (plus invading digital modes and SSB pirates) band from 7000 to 7040 across Region 3.

This goes to show the necessity of having an organized union to be ready to counter any such attempts, as are frequently made over the years, to whittle away at our CW exclusive bands.

Thanks to the ARRL and its long anti-CW policies, the “Band Plan” of the USA which sets a large influence upon the amateur radio world, does not have any CW exclusive bands at all instead giving them over to data modes.

This has set a dangerous precedent and has buried the “Gentleman’s Band Plan” concept in a manner from which it is likely never able to be retrieved. The result is both over-complication and over-simplification.

The over-simplification of recommending digital modes across the entire formerly exclusive CW sections and the over-complication of current proposals such as that from the anti-CW WIA, have resulted in conflicts.

One only needs to tune the 17m and 12m worldwide DX bands to see that digital modes, which have over the years taken away 15kHz from CW, in practice have taken 20kHz as they don’t respect the lower boundary.

This again is due to the over-complication side: digital users are unlikely to remember, and have no compulsion to print out, that the lower edge is 24915 and not 24910, and 18095 not 18090, nice round numbers seem to be preferred.

This has left CW with only 20kHz on these two bands, and this is woefully inadequate for interference-free CW QSO whenever there is a “DX“-pedo underway with split operation.

In fact, the poor planning of previous IARU Band Plans has resulted in the CW sections split in half with digital right in the middle, and the areas above often completely unused.

The digital mode users typically leave their computers and modems switched on 24/7 and thus unattended, and with the volume down. They do not hear CW stations at all, and don’t care.

This is easily evidenced by tuning the high DX bands such as 10m and 12m at night when the operators are asleep: plentiful loud unattended digital mode signals continue working their DXCC automatically.

A1A operators, who do not operate with the volume down but up, and who do not use decoders but their ears and brains, suffer the headache of QRM from digital modes without being able to even identify the QRM station.

It is the right of every radio amateur to report harmful interference, at first, to the radio amateur directly via mail at his public QRZ address, or, failing that, to the national society and if that fails, to the authorities.

However, this cannot even be done at the simplest first most basic initial level, where most such conflicts are instantly resolved among SSB and CW operators: a call to the station and “Please QSY”.

It cannot be done because it would require the A1A Operator to have a computer and modem in his radio shack and additionally the software for every digital mode, to tune it in and decode the callsign.

This is why initially when digital modes were introduced into amateur radio, there was still the legal requirement to identify the transmission periodically in a universally decodable mode, namely CW.

The inventors of PACTOR, avid and highly skilled CW operators themselves, built this feature into all of their modems, however, most digital users simply switch it off.

The “Digital Terrorist” Joe Taylor did not care about making his mode frequencies fixed in the CW portion of bands, nor about making any CW ident part of the mode for such practical purposes.

He set the trend for the ignorant and careless digital “WSJT” mode users to operate with the volume down and without a care in the world for other band and mode users, whether SSB or CW.

This can in fact now only be rectified in one of three ways:

1) at the legal level by removing such digital modes that are now in evident wide spread abuse outside of the Amateur Radio Service, as a computer left connected to a radio using FT8 doesn’t fit the ITU definition of amateur radio, and much of HF is now vacant.

2) expanding the existing HF bands at a future world Administrative Radio Conference, however, IARU societies won’t do this as they don’t see the opportunity nor the problem, and giving new EXCLUSIVE CW bands to A1A.

3) allowing access to the A1A Exclusive Bands only at the legal level of the license itself. This necessitates passing a CW Operating Procedure and Morse Exam, and can be conducted by qualified CW Examiners.

As with all things in life, whatever disease is not addressed and rectified early, will fester and eventually take over, preventing any return to health. Such is our current condition for the A1A operator.

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