[CW] ARRL Band Plan

Sun Apr 12 14:41:52 EDT 2015

If the IARU and ARRL bandplans were the law of the lands, it would 
indeed be helpful.  You appaently have not lived in a place where there 
was NO bandplan, and people could willy nilly do their own thing.  For 
instance, down in SA )(specifically Venezuela, from first hand 
experience).  Local will get on what is normally a cw (ONLY) frequency 
and start chatting with their buddies two block down the street, in 
SSB.  CW ops are completely blasted out of their seats, from such 
operation.  Especially if one is trying to work DX, who have band plans, 
either on a daily basis, or in contests.  The CW op simply cannot hear 
the rest of the world, on those sub bands.

Just fire up a slow scan signal, or an SSB QSO on top of a CW station, 
and see what it does to them.  The other direction, of course, makes 
little difference to the SSB op, as cw is just a small percentage of 
their signals.  A dozen signals cant make a dent in the effectiveness of 
the strong SSB ops transmissions.

    Back in the 50's and 60's there were Chinese fishing boats off the 
coast of Washington/Oregon who were constantly interfering with 
stateside ops on 80 meters - smack dab in the middle of the cw portion 
of the band.  I worked Novice Roundup, and several other contests, 
having to put up with that.  First and foremost, it is a stupid place to 
put safety signals, and was illegal.  Except, the FCC stated something 
to the point of " They are foreign licensed operations - and we have no 
control over them"  Well- Indeed?   They were just outside US waters, 
but interfering with legally licensed amateur signals. They were 
transmitting in frequencies which were not allowed by treaty - even 
within their own waters.  Back in those days, Novice licensed stations 
HAD to use crystal control, so they always appeared right smack in the 
middle of some of the favorite crystals we used.  WE could not simply 
QSY, as those were the crystals we had.  One day, dozens of us were on 
the main two or three crystals, and we could hear the ships in there 
talking, but we were on before they even came up, and we stayed there.  
The next day, the news casts reported a Chinese ship had put out an 
emergency call (voice), and no one heard it.  The ship went down, with 
loss of life.  As far as we could figure out, it was one of the freqs 
that Novices frequented, and their own ships had not heard the SOS.  
Funny - it took them only two days to completely abandon the 80 meter 
ham bands, and we never heard them there again.  They were NOT crystal 
controlled, and could have changed bands at any time, but it took this 
for them to decide to obey the law.

So, yes band plans are important.  If everyone had the same ones, there 
would be no infighting between different administrations, and the rule 
and regulations would be adopted by everyone, and follwed by most 
operators.  There are always a few- but if no one answers them, at the 
wrong place, they soon learn to go where they are wanted.  Has nothing 
to do with control freq - just common sense.

I too am unhappy that administrations keep whacking away at the cw 
bands, and it doesnt make sense, considering there are now more people 
operating CW , than before when CW was a required test subject to obtain 
a ticket.
> Steve WD8DAS via CW <mailto:cw at mailman.qth.net>
> Saturday, April 11, 2015 11:25 PM
>
> I am very uncomfortable with the whole business of unofficial ARRL and 
> IARU bandplans and how they seem to "morph" into eventual official 
> rules and regulations.  I feel these plans actually create more 
> conflict among operators and really only serve to make control freaks 
> happier.  I would prefer no such stuff and would let the operations 
> naturally cluster as they will.
>
> But we now have both unofficial bandplans and official rules and 
> regulations telling us where we can operate various modes, so I choose 
> to make my opinions known.
>
> The current ARRL proposal would increase the sub band for RTTY and 
> other digital teleprinter modes on 40m to 7070 - 7125 kHz and carve 
> out a special place for wider digital modes in the range 7115 - 7125 kHz.
>
> http://www.arrl.org/files/file/About%20ARRL/Committee%20Reports/2015/January/SUMNER%20QS4.pdf
>
> Yes we could still operate CW there but if this plan moves ahead you 
> can expect new QRM from digital operations.
>
>
> Steve WD8DAS
>
> sbjohnston at aol.com
> http://www.wd8das.net/
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> =30=

-- 
Danny Douglas

<http://www.getpostbox.com>
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