RadioBanter - View Single Post

July 8th 03, 03:03 AM

(Geoffrey S. Mendelson) wrote in message ...
In article ,
Brian Kelly wrote:

The BC stations in 7.0-7.1 have always seemed to me to be much more of
a problem than they are in 7.2-7.3 but maybe that's just a perception
on my part. Beyond that cleaning out 7.0-7.1 will be a huge
improvement for the CW and digital crowd but the phone guys will still
have work to do at upcoming WRCs to obtain the same improvements.

Remember that the "CW band" concept only exists in the U.S. In the
rest of the world the 40m phone band starts at 7.0mHz.

Lotta hams in this country don't realize that.

Here in
Israel, all of Europe and Africa, the whole band is only 7.0-7.1 mHz.

Understood.

Getting the broadcast band out of there 7.0-7.2 will also open that
extra 100kHz to us too. It would be nice to be able to use 40m for
SSB to the U.S., something I can't do now.

The bottom line biggie with respect to the 20+ year effort to
"harmonize" 40 has always been to open up more spectrum space for what
we consider "the DX". Finally being able to SSB transceive with the DX
on 40 should be an added benefit but I have reservations about how
well that will actually work in practice. Under the best of conditions
decent reliable copy by both stations between 4X4 and W3 is going to
be difficult to find. It's simply the nature of the beast we call 40M
phone.

Since the novices are just about gone, IMHO the U.S. should drop the
7.1-7.15 mHz CW band.

The U.S. "CW band" is 7.000-7.3000 . . .

Actually what I would like to see is a worldwide
7.0-7.2 mHz 40m band, with the following "band plan"

7.000-7.050 CW

As a CW contester I disagree with this one. All the major CW contests
(I can count at least four of those per year) take over at least the
lower 40 kHz +/-. If only the remaining 10 kHz were available for
non-contest CW operations on those weekends I think the howls of
protest would set some new records.

7.050-7.100 Digital
7.100-7.200 SSB voice, no SSTV, packet, etc.

Methinks *nothing* should be done along any of these lines until
(a)there is a significant volume of Region 1 & 3 operations in the
7.1-7.2 segemnt and (b) the impact of the elimination of code tests in
many countries can be gauged via experience. Fixing things we don't
even have yet is not going to have much sex appeal at the FCC or
amongst the bandplanners.

Geoff (4x1gm, N3OWJ)

w3rv