A ham radio operator in Idaho must pay a record $34,000 penalty for causing interference with communications during a fire suppression effort.
"… put fire suppression and public safety itself at risk.”
Just a side note - I wish people would rediscover the term “in danger” instead of saying “at risk” all the time. Doesn’t “endangered public safety” sound worse than putting it at risk? Risk is a bland, sterile word, like you’re deciding what to do about your mutual funds. Danger has so much more flavor - it’s looming and immediate. At risk sounds like you’re reading a menu. You can “take” a risk or not. But when you’re in danger you better get off your ass and get OUT of danger right now, or you could be toast. Danger comes after you. It knows where you live. Danger has teeth. Let’s get danger back in play!
The notion of risk rely on probability of the danger to occur. Think about a massive meteor crossing Earth’s path. It might be the end of life on Earth, so it’s a overwhelming danger. But it’s very unlikely, so the risk is very low. On the other side, the risk of getting a cold in winter is pretty high, but the danger is very low.
Yes, danger exists whether you know about it or not, and risk is the chance of it happening to you, a decision to take that chance. You can risk going out in a tornado, but when you you’re in danger.
I can’t help but feel that the punishment is overly harsh. Yes he absolutely shouldn’t have done it. But they haven’t said that it actually caused any harm, and he was doing it in good faith (although, again shouldn’t have). They also admit that his financial situation could justify a reduced penalty, so it feels ridiculous that they don’t reduce the penalty to something he can actually afford.
Everyone in the Amateur Radio community knows that the FCC is fed up with people using frequencies that they don’t have legal access to and as a result they’ve been issuing increasingly harsh penalties over the past few years.
As for whether he was “doing it in good faith”, well, I question that. The guy was trying to get firefighters to protect his radio repeater site and one of the repeaters located there was for his own business. He had a personal financial interest in getting a fire team over there.
I’m an Amateur Radio operator myself and I have limited sympathy for the situation this guy put himself in. The proper course of action was to leave the wildfire area and come back when it was over, not keep making illegal radio transmissions until a fire chief drives over there and tells you to shut the fuck up.
Yeah, outside of say, him radioing that there was a fire team/people trapped in a life-threatening situation in X location, I don’t think there’s almost any situation where abusing the bands is justified.
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Toothless against corporations; armed to teeth against good samaritans
You’re not really a good samaritan when you’re using emergency frequencies without authorization. Sounds like he deserves the punishment.
He wasn’t told not to, either!
He wasn’t told not to, either!
First and most importantly Mr Frawley holds an “Amateur Extra” license from the FCC. That license class VERY CLEARLY doesn’t allow the license holder to transmit on 151.145 MHz. A person literally has to pass a proctored exam proving that they know this. Since this guy upgraded to Amateur Extra from Tech No-Code that means he passed a second proctored exam proving that he knew what frequencies he was legally allowed to operate on.
Second and equally critical to your comment the fire operations section chief left the scene of the fire, drove to the airstrip and told Frawley to cease operations on the frequency. He got personally and directly told to STFU and obey the law, taking a section chief away from an active firezone.
The guy isn’t some n00b; he’s been licensed for a long time and well knew that what he was doing wasn’t allowed.
Looking at the guys profile page and the article it seems clear that he did this because there were two radio repeaters under threat from the fire, one Amateur VHF and the other his own business band repeater. He had a personal financial interest in trying to get firefighting efforts redirected to protect his property.
Everyone in the Amateur community knows that the FCC will rain breaks on you for doing stuff like this so as an Amateur myself I have very limited sympathy for the predicament that this idiot put himself in.
Licensed operator for 30+ years here. You speak the truth.
Just wondering, what kind of business’s use a radio repeater like that? I had thought most radios were used for airlines, or public services
Do they require you to also take the General class license as a prerequisite for the Extra? When I passed the test for General, they offered to let me take the Extra test but I hadn’t studied for it.
You do still have to pass the General Exam but on his personal page he said that he did both the General and Amateur Extra at the same testing session so I counted them as one…but he did in fact have to pass two.
Yes, you must pass the general exam before taking the amateur extra exam.
Validation downvotes are strong in this community I see.
Fair enough, but financially ruining the guy is a bit much. Do we even know what fate he’s sentenced to? Is it homelessness and death?
By Jove, I think you’re right!
