[ADXA] What the Heck is a "WARC Band" ?

[w5zn at w5zn.org]

Greetings ADXA Folks,

 

What the heck is a “WARC band”? 

 

My amateur radio license affords me the privilege (yes, a privilege, not a right) to operate on frequencies allocated to the Amateur Radio Service but I can’t find any authorization that permits me to operate on a “WARC” band. Is WARC a licensed radio service?

 

OK, I’ll confess this is a pet peeve of mine. The Amateur Radio Service, through a lot of hard work by ARRL and the International Amateur Radio Union, acquired three new HF allocations at the World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC) in 1979 in the 30-, 17-, and 12-meter band segments. That was 44 years ago so why can’t we, after all these years, refer to them as amateur radio bands? 

 

In fact, a WARC no longer exists! The conference still occurs but the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) renamed it to World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) several years ago and established it would convene regularly every four years instead of randomly like the WARC did.

 

The last WRC action that involved an amateur HF allocation was in 2003 at WRC-03 when, once again, ARRL and the International Amateur Radio Union were successful in acquiring a worldwide primary allocation for the amateur service at 40 meters from 7.0 to 7.2 MHz. Of course, prior to that date and currently the USA enjoys a 7.0 to 7.3 MHz allocation however, for those licensed prior to this action you will recall the rest of the world was only authorized a 100 KHz segment, from 7.0 to 7.1 MHz, for use and the spectrum above 7.1 MHz was filled with commercial broadcast stations that made the band pretty much unusable at night in the US, especially during the winter months.

 

So, why don’t we refer to the “new” primary allocation at 40 meters as a WRC band?

 

As I said, it’s simply a pet peeve of mine and folks will refer to things as they wish, that’s perfectly fine with me. Just remember, though, the next time you refer to the 30-, 17-, or 12-meter amateur band as a “WARC band” I’ll probably ask, in humor, “What the heck is a WARC band?” and then ask if you’ve operated in the new WRC band? 😊

 

73 Joel W5ZN

 

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