I have found out in the course of a long public life that the things I did not say never hurt me. - Calvin Coolidge

I’m not certain what to think about ham radio’s response to the now infamous, Delete, Delete, Delete memo where the FCC is “soliciting public input on any FCC rules in any service that members of the public believe should be deleted or modified “for the purpose of alleviating unnecessary regulatory burdens.”

The perfectly legitimate fear being that once this new delete happy regime gets finished with us, the amateur service will be, well, deleted. Perhaps not outlawed, but worse, no longer federally regulated. Maybe no more licenses, no more call signs, and everyone can transmit anywhere in our bands at will.

In the current unhealthy environment for any federal service perhaps the amateur radio would be de-regulated anyway, but in this instance I think we might have been better served by remaining mum without drawing any undue attention to ourselves. You know, maybe fly under the radar just this once. But no, hams have a long history of opening mouth before engaging brain and when it comes to commenting online, the gas valves are wide open and hams have apparently flooded the FCC with comments on this matter…

Assuming the agency reads any of that feedback, and that might be a big assumption, we can at least be certain the new regime now knows who we are, and that we are squatting on billions of dollars of valuable radio spectrum unavailable for use by the general population, at least without a license, thereby making the amateur service a prime hunk of beef begging to be carved up.