Licensee Hit with $24,000 Fine for Jamming Net, Failure to ID
I don&#x27;t think such a huge fine is justified, how about confiscating his equipment, and banning him from using radio equipment capable of transmitting on amateur frequencies for a period of time?<p>It didn&#x27;t cause any harm to emergency services, or disrupt anything other than a hobby. Fining him such a large amount for disrupting a hobby is ridiculous. And it makes me want nothing to do with amateur radio, and stick to unlicensed bands only.<p>The guy fined likely has children, a family to raise, which are all much more important than someone&#x27;s hobby. You cannot impose such financial hardship for essentially what is trolling someone, on the radio. It&#x27;s ridiculous.<p>Draconian penalties may only encourage miscreants to disrespect amateur radio, in an act of rebellion? And those miscreants might be able to get away with jamming it legally, by using powerline Ethernet adaptors, which will typically cause interference for the whole neighborhood. There&#x27;s no law saying you can&#x27;t have a really long piece of electrical wiring in your home, with absolutely nothing connected to it at the end? <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gm4fvm.blogspot.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;power-line-adapter-noise-interference.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;gm4fvm.blogspot.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;06&#x2F;power-line-adapter-noise-...</a><p>Maybe we non-amateurs should lobby the government to open up the VHF&#x2F;UHF amateur bands for unlicensed operation at low power, just like 2.4GHz, and consign this hobby to the dustbin of history? How about getting industry involved in the lobbying as well? Can we find any good commercial use cases for those bands? In Europe we can already use a large part of the 70cm band (433MHz) at low power levels.<p>The radio spectrum is supposed to belong to all of us? Not just a privileged few who possess a license, and are so willing to punish others so excessively for relatively minor infractions?