The Short Wave Magazine August 1976 [antikvár]

FOR THE RADIO AMATEUR AND AMATEUR RA SiORmvE EDITORIAL Budmarsh We must return now to our oíd friend the Budmarsh of Coochpawani,* leader (imaginary) of the Afro-Asian bloc on the International Telecommunications Union, Geneva, the body responsible for producing frequency allocations for all the world's radío services and requirements. The Budmarsh—who was first introduced in this space in the October 1963 issue—will be in action again during the next World Administrative Radio Conference in 1979. This will be when a particular matter of the utmost importance to us all as radio amateurs will be discussed—a problem fully recogriised and clearly understood in responsible circles throughout the world of Amateur Radio: That of retaining reasonable areas of frequency for AT-station operation. It is, of course, still not at all clear what the solution is going to be. What we have to remember is that the Budmarsh and his friends have a voting power out of all proportion to their true status, which is that of júnior and somewhat inexperienced members of the Union, with little interest in and less understanding of Amateur Radío. Some of these nations have populations hardly more than that of an English county—yet they enjoy equal voting rights with the U.K., the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. In these cir-cumstances, it could well be that in the process of bargaining against heavy voting odds, the European nations will have to give way in some directíons in order to get their requirements met in others. At the I.T.U. conference table (and this is the point of the foregoing) some of these bargains could well be struck at the expense of the amateur frequency bands, as being one of the easiest channels along which to secure agreement. Of course, it may never happen—but all the signs are that it very well might. Unfortuna-tely, the central fact emerging from all this is that the greatest menace to the future of Amateur Radio is not so much the "crowded state of the bands,'* or theV'excessive use of power," or the "!rresponsible behaviour of some amateur elements," or even "disincentive licensíng"—but the Budmarsh of Coochpawani and his Afro-Asian friends. And what, you may now ask, is likely to be the outcome of it all? The broad answer as we see it is that, whatever decisions may be taken on paper, they will remain paper decisions because Amateur Radio cannot now be destroyed simply be decree. jyi *(A loose rendering from the Hindustani would be "Villain Who Could'nt Care Le»»") WORLD-WIDE COMMUNICA TION