Southgate News reports that the FCC is, at last, supporting USA amateurs being given access to the 2200m and 630m bands. I sometimes complain that OFCOM here in the UK needs a kick up the backside, but the FCC seem an order of magnitude worse. I do hope that the USA gets these bands. I've had an article of mine on 472kHz approved by the ARRL now for nearly 2 years, awaiting the release of the 472kHz band over there! I am amazed just how slow the FCC seems to be. In many ways the USA takes a far more "grown up" attitude to the use of the radio spectrum, but the unbelievable slowness over the release of these 2 bands just beggars belief.
See http://www.southgatearc.org/news/2015/april/fcc_proposes_to_permit_amateur_access_to_2200_and_630_meters.htm#.VUKSWpNQqPc
And they are getting the rest of 160m
ReplyDeleteas a primary allocation.
Did you also know that Norway has a
24.9Mhz band that is twice the size
of everyone else ? Their band extends
another 100Khz lower.
Whilst the UK and others have obtained
a fair few extra bands over the years,
these have all been secondary allocations.
In many ways the primary stuff has not
seen any changes for many decades.
The last time we got any primary stuff
was back in 1979 - think about it ;-)
73 de Andy g0ftd
Andy,
ReplyDeleteI have long wished for more bands (small?) at interesting places in the spectrum from OFCOM but, as we contribute nothing to their coffers we get given pieces of spectrum that others don't want. Personally I see no issues with shared allocations as we seem to suffer very little interference (in either direction) in our existing shared bands. Which reminds me, I need to add something on the RSGB forum about spectrum matters.