[EAS] EAS monitoring sources

[David Turnmire]

With the usual disclaimer that "I'm not an attorney"... the distinction 
I have often heard made by those more knowledgeable than me is between 
"planned" use of amateur radio for particular "emergency" message 
traffic that wouldn't otherwise be legal... and using amateur radio (or 
many other forms of radio communications) to save life and property when 
no other means are available.  So... local law enforcement can't by a 
room full of Baofeng radios for $25 each and write their use up in plans 
for when their fancy 700 MHz trunked digital radio system goes down for 
maintenance... and claim 97.403 as legal justification.

In short, there are a whole lot of organizations that are "in the 
business" of saving lives and protecting property... whether they are 
volunteers or paid.  They don't get to just ignore the rules and use 
what ever equipment is handy (or cheap).  On the other hand... if they 
have made reasonable efforts to communicate "under the rules"... and 
something exceptional happens that results in lives being at risk and 
their "normal communications systems are not available"... then... 
regulations such as 97.403 come into play.

Clearly there are some "gray areas" in between.  I'm not aware of the 
FCC's enforcement bureau going out of their way to test the limits of 
those gray areas.  Nor should we.

All that being said... it seems to this non-attorney that §97.113(c) 
would allow for the most common types of EAS alerts... weather:

    (c) No station shall retransmit programs or signals emanating from any
        type of radio station other than an amateur station, *except
    *propagation
        and *weather forecas**t information* intended for use by the
    general public
        and originated from United States Government
    stations...Propagation, weather
        forecasts, and manned spacecraft communications retransmissions
    may not
        be conducted on a regular basis, but only occasionally, as an
    incident
        of normal amateur radio communications.

Under that regulation, couldn't an EAS decoder with weather receiver be 
attached to a local ham repeater, so as to automatically interrupt the 
normal voice communications and provide weather alerts as some have 
done?  We have lots of older model EAS decoders out there now that 
aren't legal for broadcasters to use anymore, but would seem perfectly 
satisfactory for this use.

Dave

On 8/26/2016 9:01 PM, Phil Johnson wrote:
> "§97.403 Safety of life and protection of property.
> No provision of these rules prevents the use by an amateur
> station of any means of radio communication at its disposal to
> provide essential communication needs in connection with the
> immediate safety of human life and immediate protection of
> property when normal communication systems are not available".
>
> Are you really saying this requires learned communications counsel to
> interpret when there's an emergency?  Sure looks crystal clear to me.