If the ARRL proposal is accepted, then the main change would be that the wide data modes would have to all move up above 14.100 at first. The impression that I got from reading Dave Sumner's comments was that they would like to see a bandplan where the digital voice would be segregated from analog voice. Right now, digital voice can be anyplace in the voice portion of the band. Same with SSTV whether analog or digital. The bizarre (and to me, intolerable) situation is that "data" can not be used in the phone area even though you would not be able to tell any difference when listening with your ear between digital voice and digital data. This means that those of us who want to be able to switch between voice and data on the same frequency can not do so except on the 160 meter band. We would have to tie up two separate frequencies in different parts of the band. The ability to talk to someone with a voice transmission and then experiment with digital data seems so useful, not to mention the practical use for emergency communications.
The new proposal does not seem to offer any change that would alleviate this situation except that you could switch between digital voice and digital data. While it is possible that some radio amateurs would simply ignore any bandplan recommendations and only stay legal under the FCC rules, I don't personally feel very comfortable with that. Also, the new proposal will compress the wide band digital modes into much smaller areas than they are now. In many ways, I find the proposals more restricting than what we have now, even though the claim has been that it will advance the radio art. What it mostly seems to do is allow wide BW stations in automatic (includes semi automatic) operation to operate anyplace in the wide BW area. Right now they are tightly restricted to only a few KHz on most bands. Under the new proposal, wide bandwidth semi-automatic operations may find it much more difficult to operate, and if they are not careful, could cause a groundswell of even more opposition to their QRMing. We can only expect more, not less, wide BW digital operations as these technologies are invented. It is interesting that the ARRL has not proposed that any HF station, in automatic operation (that includes "semi" automatic as well) must be operated in a manner that detects a busy frequency and prohibits the robot from transmitting on such a channel even though it is been completely practical to implement under software control. 73, Rick, KV9U Dave Bernstein wrote: >I agree, Rick. > >Continuing to use 20M as an example, I doubt that the ARRL's >bandplan will restrict phone operations to anything less than 14150- >14350; thus all wideband digital modes will likely be restricted to >14100-14150. The contention between 3500 hz keyboard-to-keyboard and >semi-automatic QSOs in 14100-14150 will be intolerable unless >operators of semi-automatic stations start losing their licenses if >their stations habitually QRM in-progress QSOs while responding to >remote requests. > > 73, > > Dave, AA6YQ > > ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Yahoo! Groups gets a make over. See the new email design. http://us.click.yahoo.com/XISQkA/lOaOAA/yQLSAA/ELTolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Need a Digital mode QSO? Connect to Telnet://cluster.dynalias.org Other areas of interest: The MixW Reflector : http://groups.yahoo.com/group/themixwgroup/ DigiPol: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Digipol (band plan policy discussion) Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/digitalradio/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
