"KØHB" wrote

"Jeffrey Herman" wrote
Let's crunch some numbers: Our total MF/HF spectrum consists of just
3.75 MHz, with only about half of it, 1875 kHz, useful for
communications at any one particular time of the day. If suddenly,
as if by magic, all licensees were granted MF/HF privileges, we could
possibly have 670,000 hams attempting to fill that 1.875 MHz.

Watch this closely, boys and girls. We're about to be given a demonstra
tion of
"figures don't lie, but liars figure". In this case the person "figurin
g" is no
less than a self-proclaimed university "math lecturer", so we're seeing
a pro at
work!

"Self-proclaimed"? Send me an email and I'll give you the phone number of
the personnel office -- they'll verify that I've been a Step C Lecturer
for 20 years.

(I've never understood why liberals resort to name-calling and sarcasm; do
they lack the ability to provide a rebuttal in a calm and polite manner?)

Okay, I'll grant you that folks have to work and sleep, so let's
say at any one time, we have one-fourth of all 670 kilohams
on the air, with two per QSO.

One-fourth? That averages out to 6 hours of hamming every day by every
ham, or
167,500 US hams on the air at any given instant, 24/7.

It was a worst-case starting point. Feel free to take that 670,000 and
chop it down anyway you please, then divide that figure into bandwidth of
usable spectrum at a particular time of day. To be accurate, the 1.7 MHz
of 10m should be excluded at this time, bringing that 3.75 MHz of total
spectrum bandwidth down to 2.05 MHz.

2,050,000 Hz divided by (670,000 hams divided by 2 hams per QSO) gives the
worst-case scenario, about 6 Hz per QSO. Now you can take that figure and
use it in any reasonable and realistic manner you please.

The most popular US operating event is the ARRL Field Day.

And if all 670 kilohams DID have HF privileges, the worst-case scenario above
*might* actually occur.

73,
Jeff KH6O

--
Chief Petty Officer, U.S. Coast Guard
Mathematics Lecturer, University of Hawaii System