RadioBanter - View Single Post - FCC took 11 meters from Hams and gave it to CB'ers.

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Dave wrote:
wrote:

SNIPPED

Some more facts:

11 meters was never a ham band by international treaty. FCC allowed
hams to use it on a shared basis with Industrial, Scientific and
Medical users after WW2. This was done in part as a sort of
compensation for hams' loss of 160 meters to LORAN after WW2.

The Citizens' Radio Service was created by FCC in the late 1940s. The
original Class A and Class B services were on UHF - right where FRS
and GMRS are now.

The problem was that, in those days, the UHF radios that performed well
were big, heavy, expensive, power hungry and complex. Simple UHF sets
that were small, light, inexpensive and simple didn't perform too well.

The Citizen's Radio service had so few takers at the end of 10 years
that FCC created Class C and Class D, at 27 MHz. Low power channelized
sets for 27 MHz could be made small and inexpensive even with the
technology of the late 1950s.

FCC could take the band away from hams because it wasn't a ham band by
treaty anyway. They also argued that the creation of the 15 meter ham
band in 1954, and the gradual return of 160 to hams, meant that 11
meters wasn't critical to ham radio.

Add to that the fact that 11 meters wasn't the most-popular ham band
anyway. Many popular rigs of the time didn't even cover the band. It
wasn't harmonically related to the other HF/MF ham bands of the era,
and in many areas it was full of noise from ISM users like diathermy
machines, vacuum formers, etc. Since many other countries didn't
allocate 11 meters to hams, there wasn't as much DX to work on 11. And
the 1.7 MHz wide 10 meter band was right next door.

Of course hams didn't like losing the band, fearing that it was a
harbinger of things to come, but it wasn't. Over the intervening years,
we hams got all of 160 back, and three new HF bands at 30, 17 and 12
meters. The cb boom of the '70s came and went, and hams are still here.

73 de Jim, N2EY

As a former user of 11 meters, the Ham Band, this summary pretty much reflects
my memory of events.

Thanks!

BTW, my old Multi-Elmac AH-54 [if I recall] had 11 meters
factory installed. It drifted "slighlty" during each transmission. Slightly
meaning 50 +/- KHz. I had to use crystal control to stay reasonably close to any
frequency!

I think one reason for the relative unpopularity of 11 meters with hams
was that the band was not harmonically related to other bands, meaning
crystals bought for 11 were probably not useful on any other ham band.

73 de Jim, N2EY