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posted by Fnord666 on Friday August 07 2020, @05:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the Even-the-little-guy-gets-a-win-sometimes dept.

For those of you into Ham (Amateur) radio, especially the Technician class license holders, this will be pretty exciting and a good way to keep interest in the hobby going due to now having HF transmit ability. The article discusses the re-balancing for digital modes as well, which many people will find to be good move in the digital age.

"ARRL[*] has asked the FCC to expand HF privileges for Technician licensees to include limited phone privileges on 75, 40, and 15 meters, plus RTTY and digital mode privileges on 80, 40, and 15 meters. The FCC has not yet invited public comment on the proposals, which stem from recommendations put forth by the ARRL Board of Directors' Entry-Level License Committee, which explored various initiatives and gauged member opinions in 2016 and 2017."

[*] ARRL: American Radio Relay League (Wikipedia).

Link to original Story:
http://www.arrl.org/news/arrl-requests-expanded-hf-privileges-for-technician-licensees

Powerpoint presentation of changes (With new bandplan pictures):
http://www.arrl.org/files/file/Bandplanning/25%20Appendix%20BP_Committee_recs%20FINAL%20(h).pdf

Thanks for reading and 73's
KE5DKD


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Friday August 07 2020, @08:27PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 07 2020, @08:27PM (#1033137)

    Otherwise why bother with the levels at all?

    Yeah exactly. The old timers used to complain about incentive licensing was a mistake. They were right. Nobody can coherently explain what the complications in the 80M bandplan do to help Ham Radio. It should be as simple as if you have a license, you do what you want from 3.5 Mhz to 4 Mhz and here's the suggested band plan.

    I passed my extra decades ago so its not like I have a dog in the fight. I remember when I passed my extra and now I can transmit in the bottom 25 of CW and bottom 200 of phone and its like, now why would I want to do that, because I live in a suburb with S9+20 dB noise across the redneck CB HF bands so 80 is unusable anyway. I understand there's rural hams with 160 meter beam antennas who can make use of that, but not most people.

    In the decades since, with cheap unshielded unfiltered Chinese switching power supplies the noise level on 80M has increased to S9+40dB.

    Noise level has started to negatively impact weak signal 2M work, thats how bad it is.

    On the bright side that project to re-use 122 GHz automobile radar units for ham purposes looks cool although I somehow missed the ordering despite being a loyal QEX subscriber. I'll get in on the next wave of gear. Looks like fun to experiment with. And weak signal VHF/UHF has, at least locally, transitioned entirely over to FT series digital which is pretty cool, so I don't have to listen to the noise anymore. IF you don't like ham radio right now, just wait a decade and it'll all be new.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Informative=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
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    Total Score:   5