The Backbone of VHF Amateur Radio May Be Under Threat

Discussed yesterday: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20321272" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20321272</a>

The proposed frequency is just above the aviation VHF band (108 to 136Mhz) so it makes sense to use it when aviation runs out of frequencies to use.<p>However... EASA has made all aviation radios switch from 25Khz channel spacing to 8.33Khz channel spacing, essentially tripling the available number of frequencies for everything between 118 and 136Mhz. So I cannot imagine there is a current lack of frequencies for aviation in France (or anywhere in Europe).<p>The US has some shortage (and still uses 25Khz channel separation), but they solved it by sharing frequencies between small airports.

I can&#x27;t help but feel the amateur radio community could have used a rebrand for the internet age. I understand there&#x27;s a lot of history but it&#x27;s hard to get young people interested in being _hams_, a word that has not aged well. I got my licence about a decade back and really loved the technical pieces - learning about how radio waves worked, propagation with different bands, the ability to (try) to build your own modem with two radios and an Arduino, but when it came to actually talking to people on the radio... other people just wanted to talk about radios.<p>It is really fascinating what you can do with 2m band radios. For those times and places where your cell phone won&#x27;t work, digital modes on the new Icom radios look pretty cool. Being able to hook up a radio to a laptop to send something digitally still seems valuable and relevant! But the community branding could use some modernization to push those use cases.

as an aside, I got my ham radio licence because of my interest in long distance microwave mesh networking. there is a group called aredn <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arednmesh.org" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arednmesh.org</a> which uses wifi devices modified to run in the Amateur portions of 2ghz and 5ghz to create massive mesh networks. The lack of noise on our allocations means we can make really long connections. I personally have a 50 dollar Microtik dish that makes a 25 mile connection to a backbone node and get about 25mbps. If there are any HAMs that are reading this, or you want to become a HAM it&#x27;s a fun project that blends computers and radio.

The fact that there was little opposition was partly due to the short time between the submittal of the amended proposal by France and the meeting itself.<p>Here&#x27;s some background by someone who is well connected with the German authorities:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mailman.pe1itr.com&#x2F;pipermail&#x2F;moon-net&#x2F;2019-June&#x2F;039773.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mailman.pe1itr.com&#x2F;pipermail&#x2F;moon-net&#x2F;2019-June&#x2F;03977...</a>

There&#x27;s a lot more to this than simply taking spectrum away from hams. This potentially affects other ham bands too.<p>The allotted spectrum for ham use was designed intelligently to reduce (though not completely eliminate) the chances of hams accidentally clobbering folks outside of a ham band with harmonics. So for someone operating in the 10 meter band (28-29.7MHz), the 2nd harmonic is the 6 meter band (50-54MHz), the 8th harmonic is the 1.25m band (220-224MHz) and the 16th harmonic is the 2 meter band being discussed. The closest band to cause interference on the 2m band would be users of the the 1.25m band though as the 2m band is the 2nd harmonic from it.<p>Also, this is why the 2m and 70cm bands (144&#x2F;440MHz) are commonly included on the same radio: one antenna can sort-of work for both bands. The antenna is tuned for the 2m band and that means it will also radiate 3rd harmonic excitations as well (the 440MHz band is the 3rd harmonic from the 144MHz band). So it works decent for 2 meters and as a crappy but acceptable 70cm band antenna. The only casualty is the 2nd harmonic band between them at 288MHz which is not allocated to hams.<p>But anyway, there&#x27;s no &quot;type acceptance&quot; required for ham radios because that allows hams to build their own gear and not just be appliance operators. Thales is setting themselves up for a lifetime of potential problems if they manage to crack open the 2m band for commercial use.<p>Lastly, I will say that this is from the US perspective, I&#x27;m less well versed in ITU regions and bands available outside of the US. Thanks.

There are too many existing terrestrial and space users for this to fly. They&#x27;re not getting a globally harmonized ham band. Is it April 1?

From the ARRL: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arrl.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;restraint-urged-in-response-to-2-meter-reallocation-proposal" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.arrl.org&#x2F;news&#x2F;restraint-urged-in-response-to-2-me...</a>

The official proposal if anyone is interested:<p>&gt; <i>The decisions of previous conferences have introduced some restrictions to the use and have imposed constraints on the development of aeronautical mobile applications within some existing mobile allocations traditionally used by the aeronautical mobile applications.</i><p>&gt; <i>At the same time, the number of manned and unmanned aircraft equipped with sensors has grown significantly in the past 20 years together with the need of bidirectional low to high data rate communications. Aeronautical applications like fire surveillance, border surveillance, air quality and environment monitoring, traffic monitoring, disaster monitoring, terrain modelling, imagery (visible, infrared, radar, meteo), video monitoring require non-safety communications between various types of aeronautical platforms.</i><p>&gt; <i>Consequently the need of non-safety data communications between various types of aeronautical platforms increases and so the need for new frequency bands.</i><p>* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cept.org&#x2F;ecc&#x2F;groups&#x2F;ecc&#x2F;cpg&#x2F;cpg-pt-a&#x2F;client&#x2F;meeting-documents&#x2F;file-history&#x2F;?fid=51940" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cept.org&#x2F;ecc&#x2F;groups&#x2F;ecc&#x2F;cpg&#x2F;cpg-pt-a&#x2F;client&#x2F;meeting-...</a>

I have this radio<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Yaesu-FT-60R-Handheld-Amateur-Transceiver&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B00Q1UYR1G" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;Yaesu-FT-60R-Handheld-Amateur-Transce...</a><p>which works on both the 2-meter and 70-cm band, particularly if you use this kind of antenna:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hamuniverse.com&#x2F;2mladjpole.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;hamuniverse.com&#x2F;2mladjpole.html</a><p>I live in a poor spot for 2m, we have some active club repeaters. Someone is always listening on those repeaters, but they probably don&#x27;t want to chat with you.<p>The west coast has more VHF and UHF action than any place I have been on the east. There are repeaters with people who talk nonstop in English, Spanish, other languages. You hear people talking on 2m at 4:00 in the morning around Van Nuyes.

There are millions of these radios in the hands of both licensed hams AND unlicensed preppers&#x2F;airsoft players&#x2F;etc who bought their $25 BaoFeng radio on Amazon.<p>Thales wants to reallocate the band for autonomous drone operations.<p>What could possibly go wrong?

Unpopular opinion time: spectrum is a limited resource. We shouldn&#x27;t waste it on efficient analog technologies like conventional commercial and amateur radio. We&#x27;ve already ceased conventional broadcasts: that&#x27;s a step in the right direction, but there&#x27;s more to do. The entire RF spectrum should be devoted to LTE-like efficient, packetized, and secure communication. I&#x27;d make small exceptions for things like radio astronomy, but I don&#x27;t think we should be squandering prime regions of the EM frequency space just to support transceivers that Marconi would have recognized.