On Mar 30, 11:43Â pm, Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
On Mar 30, 7:37� pm, Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
On Mar 29, 1:18�pm, Dave Heil wrote:
Remember that often the DX is transmitting outside the US
'phone subband.

Rare stuff, yes. Â Less rare stuff, not as often.

The time is long past for divided phone band segments.
� I believe that
the phone bands should be harmonized worldwide.

Be careful what you ask for.

In much if not most of the rest of the world, there are no subbands-by-
mode. The amateur regs simply state which modes are allowed on each
band, and leave the rest up to gentleman's agreements.

Point well taken. Â It works pretty well for the most part. Â Cont
ests are
a different matter. Â Let's take the 40m band as an example of when it

doesn't work well. Â In a phone contest, foreign SSB stations can ofte
n
be heard CQing as low as 7.010 despite the fact that the IARU bandplan
calls for them to no go below 7.030 or .035 as I recall.

Right. Now add a couple hundred thousand US hams to that mix....

It seems to me that countries which do not have subbands-by-mode would
resist following the US example and adding them, if for no other
reason than that they'd no longer have a refuge from US 'phone QRM.

I'd like to get away from that "refuge" concept as some sort of foreign
entitlement.

Point is, the foreign 'phone folks may not agree with you. How do we
in the USA
sell the idea that other countries should add limited phone subbands
to their rules?

 I'd also like to get away from the idea that U.S. phone
operation is "QRM". Â We're big boys and they're big boys. Â We do
n't
piddle in our end of the pool and they don't piddle in theirs.

Yet the calling CQ well below where the bandplan says no.

I'm not proposing that we do away with sub-bands by mode. Â What I'm
proposing is to expand our phone bands down to 14.112 and 21.151 on SSB

OK, but what will happen is that the DX phones will simply move even
further down the band. It's happened every time.

Can't such interference be dealt with using a notch filter? A PSK31
signal is only a few dozen Hz wide, for example.

...but a Pactor signal is a couple of hundred Hz wide and an RTTY signal
is only a little less.

So if one plops down on top of a CW QSO the mess is at least as bad as
if one plops down on a 'phone QSO. But 'phone QSOs are protected from
such interference while CW QSOs aren't.

 I can vary the width of my notch filter as well
as the center frequency. Â Can everyone do that? Â Passband tuning
helps too.

Yep. So does a good antenna system and lotsa watts.

Even more basic, isn't it the responsibility of all operators to avoid
transmitting on top of existing QSOs? Why would digital ops behave
differently in this regard when faced with 'phone signals vs. CW
signals?

That's one reason that I think it is a good idea to maintain sub-bands
by mode. Â Many digital ops aren't listening to audio at all. Â Ma
ny CW
ops are using filters as narrow as 100 Hz. Â Phone ops may hear them b
ut
they may not hear a phone signal, especially if it is weak.

The problem is that under current rules, as the US phone subbands get
wider, the CW/data subbands get narrower, and the spectrum-efficient
modes get squeezed more and more. That's just not right.

I think W5DXP's idea has the most merit: Wide modes at the top of the
band, narrow modes at the bottom, shared space in the middle.

73 de Jim, N2EY