Hello Group,

A matter has come to my attention with reference to a major plan in the 
Western New York area to establish a series of All star simplex nodes on 
frequencies within the frequencies allocated for simplex on 2 meters and 
70 centimeters.  These nodes will be interchangeable and under the total 
control of one individual in the area.  He claims the right to establish 
these anywhere without the approval of anyone who habitually uses the 
frequencies.  No individual on these frequencies locally will have any 
ability to disconnect from the nodes that will be run from a major 
repeater set up in the local area.

I have a few questions.

1.  Does this individual have the right to do this at all?
2.  If so (and I believe there is significant precedent for doing so) 
can he conceal the disconnect tones so that people wanting to use the 
frequencies for local simplex have no right to do so?
3.  What is the legality concerning the identification of such nodes.  I 
would assume that they must ID every ten minutes, but the individual has 
informed me that he can probably fix it so they are always connected and 
there will be no ID--thus we can never be sure if we are local simplex 
or over some worldwide network.
4.  If the system is mobile and if this individual chooses to set up the 
node on frequencies to which we have switched to avoid the worldwide 
network, what legal rights do we have to prevent this? Could this be 
considered a form of harassment?

Personally, I believe that simplex nodes should be limited and 
individuals establishing them should be forced to give the disconnect 
codes out to those who habitually use the frequencies.  I believe this 
is probably not an FCC requirement, but if not, what could be done about 
this situation?

-- 

Signature:
They ask me if I'm Happy, I say "yes."
They ask me "How happy are you?"
I say: "I'm as happy as a stowaway chimpanzee on a banana boat!"