On Mon, 3 Aug 2009 17:14:45 EDT, Richard wrote:

Why should St. John Rescue have to change its frequencies. They were
there first, and the new system is causing the interference.

The real problem is that the affected receiver is "wide band" and the
new system is on a "narrow band" channel that was created when the FCC
standards for the land mobile services were changed and the wide band
channels were split into several narrow band channels. Wide band
operations could continue unless harmful interference was caused or
experiences.

This sort of problem is not new. Their have been such splits before,
the one in the 1950s (60 kHz spacing going to 30 kHz spacing) resulted
in the availability of lots of older commercial mobile gear for the
ham community, and there was another one in the 1980s (30 kHz to 15
kHz) and this one came about in the late 1990s (15 kHz to 7.5 kHz).
We're just starting to see the results in outlying areas that did not
go to narrow banding earlier.

Let the new system change its frequenciesy.

It doesn't work that way. The FCC stated in a case that I was
involved in some 12 years ago that there is no protection for
wide-band receivers. The whole land mobile community either knows
this or has to be reminded of it on a regular basis.

Also, who's going to pay for St. John's frequency change? They would
have to retune the repeaters and all of their mobile radios.
St. Johns shouldn't have to pay.

"Shouldn't have to" and "will" are two different things. The only
reason that it popped up here was that hams were involve din the DF.
In most cases, the agencies themselves do that sort of thing and
professional spectrum managers (like my company) can find it on paper
quite easily and verify it with a few phone calls. It's routine
stuff.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net