On Mar 30, 7:37Â pm, Dave Heil wrote:
wrote:
On Mar 29, 1:18�pm, Dave Heil wrote:

One question which begs asking is why foreign
phone stations should have
a shelter from U.S. stations when U.S. stations
have no similar shelter
available to them? �

Because there are so many more US stations
than foreign ones in any
particular country (except Japan 4th class).
Working the USA is 1 DXCC
country.

That's an explanation, though perhaps not a valid one. Â
We W's manage to
work all the DX there is to work despite the presence
of strong QRM from
W QRM--both those who are ragchewing and those who are
working DX.

Sort of. Remember that often the DX is transmitting outside the US
'phone subband.

Things aren't the same as in the old days when
many DX stations were
rock bound or ran lesser quality equipment or had
less than optimal
antenna systems. Â In fact much of the world runs
the same Kenwood, Icom,
Yaesu and Ten-Tec equipment as the American stations.

Good point!

 The garden
variety foreign stations sometimes QRM's the rare stuff. Many
of the
garden variety foreigners are also in the chase for that
same rare DX.

Agreed.

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.

Harmonizing the US phone subbands to the rest of the world would mean
either imposing US regs on other countries, or removing subbands-by-
modes from US regs.

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.

Proposals to remove subbands-by-mode from the US regs have met with
clear and strong opposition from US hams. The recent proposal from the
"Communications Think Tank", which would have eliminated subbands-by-
mode, was strongly opposed in comments to FCC - so much that CTT
removed the proposal. Any such proposal means "data in the phone
bands", too.

Here's a similar question: Why do 'phone stations need
to be protected
from data signals but CW signals don't need that protection?
IOW, why
not allow data modes in the 'phone bands?

I think the answer to that is that CW ops are typically using narrow
receiving filters while phone ops may be listening through 2.4 or
2.7
KHz filters. Â A little of that digital signal cacophony can wreak
havoc with a phone QSO.

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

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?

73 de Jim, N2EY