The AM Forum

The Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) -- the spectrum regulators for United States private sector and government users, respectively -- have agreed to support a secondary MF allocation to the Amateur Radio Service at 461-469 kHz and 471-478 kHz at the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC-12), to be held in Geneva, Switzerland from January 23-February 17, 2012. FCC and NTIA officials formally presented the proposal at a meeting of the Second Permanent Consultative Committee (PCC.II) of the Inter-American Telecommunication Commission (CITEL), held August 30-September 3 in Fortaleza, Brazil.

According to ARRL Chief Technology Officer Brennan Price, N4QX, the proposal reconciles two widely divergent proposals for WRC-12 Agenda Item 1.23, adopted by consensus of the private sector and government users. Agenda Item 1.23 calls on WRC-12 “to consider an allocation of about 15 kHz in parts of the band 415-526.5 kHz to the amateur service on a secondary basis, taking into account the need to protect existing services.” The FCC’s WRC-12 Advisory Committee (WAC) had adopted a proposal for a secondary amateur allocation at 495-510 kHz, but the NTIA, acting on the advice of government maritime interests, initially supported no change from the status quo.

“I am pleased that the United States is taking an affirmative position on Agenda Item 1.23,” Price said “While the proposed frequency bands differ from both what the ARRL proposed and the private sector supported by consensus during WAC deliberations, it is gratifying that government interests have backed off a no change position.”

Some maritime interests, both domestically and internationally, have expressed opposition to any amateur allocation in the range 415-526.5 kHz, citing existing narrowband direct printing applications at 490 and 518 kHz, as well as future plans for the band that have yet to be fully characterized, Price explained. To the extent future maritime uses of the band have been discussed, the focus has been on the 495-505 kHz segment. Despite the lack of plans for the remainder of the range under consideration, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has adopted a draft position of “no change” and has communicated this position to the ITU. IARU President Tim Ellam, VE6SH, has met with IMO officials in efforts to soften this position.

“The road to a favorable outcome for Agenda Item 1.23 at WRC-12 remains treacherous,” Price said. “The IMO is a respected organization, and their opinion carries weight. It’s up to us to continue to make the case that a secondary allocation can be made while protecting existing services, both to the IMO and to the ITU Member States who will make the decisions at WRC-12.”

Technical Relations Specialist Jon Siverling, WB3ERA, represented the ARRL on the United States delegation to the CITEL PCC.II meeting. From that meeting, he notes other matters of concern to the Amateur Radio Service:

Regarding Agenda Item 1.14, considering an allocation to the radiolocation service between 30-300 MHz, the United States proposed that no change be made in ITU Region 2 and suggested that changes in other regions should be addressed by country-by-country footnotes to the ITU Radio Regulations. Proponents appear to be focusing on 154-156 MHz.
Regarding Agenda Item 1.19, considering regulatory provisions for software defined radio (SDR) and cognitive radio systems (CRS), sufficient support for a United States proposal of “no change” was garnered to have the proposal deemed a region-wide Inter-American proposal. The status quo reduces the risk of provisions in the Radio Regulations that could curtail experimentation in SDR and CRS by the Amateur Service and reduce the portability of equipment across international boundaries.

It would be great to have a MF allocation around 415- 526 khz......It all sounds too MF complicated however...Nothing is simple for these guys...

A great band for the guys who like to build things and experiment. The appliance ops would be pretty much out of luck on this frequency.

I sure hope it happens.

"461-469 kHz and 471-478 kHz "


Hmmmm... 8kc wide and 7kc wide slots.   I might fire up my AM rig (in the narrowband 3.5kc audio mode, of course) and take up residence down there. Then someone could truthfully scream, "You're taking up the whole frickin band!"   ;D

T

Why no proposal to restore the 1715-1800 kc allocation to amateurs at least on a secondary basis?  This spectrum is practically unused now that, with the advent of GPS, radiolocation in this part of the spectrum has practically been abandoned.

Sounds like a great idea! Have you made or will you be making such a proposal, Don? I'll sign on, I bet many others would too. 

The atmospheric noise would be horrendous down there. Digital modes or CW might get somewhere.
Fred

Include me too! More useful space to talk.
FRED

I monitor the guys around 500 Khz a lot. Signals can be quite good using a 75 meter dipole.

The daytime groundwave at 500 KC and below is incredible.

Yes, lots of QRN most of the year at night, but with a few hundred watts and a half-efficient antenna you can cover 250 miles or more during the day.

I have heard aircraft beacons as far as Ontario on the 160 sloper during the day, a QSO would have been easy.

Sometimes propagation down there gets even better during solar storms when the HF bands are dead.

The allocation could actually be a very interesting one.

Right.  It's amazing how stations down at the low end of the bc band get out--they can have field strengths with a few kw that are about equal to 50 kw stations up above 1500.

I hope if we get the allocation it does not come with all kinds of restrictions like the 5 MHz deal did. 

I doubt the FCC would allow phone in these slots, and if they did, they would mostly likely have to define strict bandwidth limitations which obviously would rub some hams the wrong way.

I'm not exactly sure how one would go about it, since it would be an ITU issue at the next WARC. Someone would have to convince the US delegation to propose the change, and hope there would be international support.  It's not a simple matter of petitioning the FCC for a rulemaking action. Probably something that would take years of preparation,  like the reallocation of broadcasting away from 7.1-7.2.

Yep, I agree. No way they would permit AM or even ssb in a 7kc wide segment.



BTW, it IS a good idea to request more room in the lower ham 160M band. However, I would keep an eye on the possibility of the FCC eventually wanting to use above 1710 to expand the AM BC band. Any proposal should keep that in mind with reasons why the amateurs need it. (vs: giving it to BC)

T

How about, "Many amateur radio stations have more listeners than the expanded band (1600-1700)broadcasters do."

Sad, but probably closer to the truth than we know!

AM broadcasters are our last bastion of hope to keep some kind of lid on the ever-increasing garbage level that is wiping out reception below 30 mc/s in many localities.  If the band folds there will be no significant segment of the public other than hams and a few SWLs left to be inconvenienced by this pollution, and except in the unlikely event that the FCC would decide to once again start doing its job, the commercial interests that generate the hash would know they could safely ignore us altogether and continue to pollute unabatedly.

A couple of years ago when I had a severe power line noise problem, I located the source on a pole a couple of miles from here.  The noise was so severe within 500 ft. of that pole that local AM signals were covered in hash even though the transmitters are all within a radius of about 8 miles, and the pole is located in the middle of a thickly settled area. I knocked on a few doors within sight of the pole with portable receiver in hand, and found about a dozen houses with people home.  No-one I talked to was even vaguely aware of any kind of local interference problem and they didn't seem alarmed when I demonstrated the noise to them with the portable radio.

A similar thang happened here, but with different results.

I set up a high gain array for 6M beaming Northeast. On all the lower bands I could hear no AC hash to the NE. But with this very low angle stack, I could hear an S9 all the time. The NE here is woods for about one mile, then it hits a neighborhood of McMansions. I took a portable receiver and hiked thru the woods until I came across a transformer in the middle of the neighborhood that sounded like it was about to go nuclear on the receiver. The noise was on and off every few seconds, randomly, like a charging capacitor dumping its load. I've never heard a line so loud - like a spark gap TX.

I walked up to the house opposite the transformer and told the owners it sounded like the pole transformer was arcing inside and could burn up at any time. I showed them the sound coming off the RX. It was the truth. The people seemed alarmed, as they should be. They immediately called the electric comapny and the noise was gone the next day... ;D

The fear of arcing and explosions gets the electric company going quickly. Whereas, a ham having problems hearing well is almost always flushed down the toilet. The difference is negligence and potential lawsuits.


T

"We Might Get Another MF Band!"

Hmmm, time to dust off the BC-453-A.

Bill

You have lots of time. They're just going to socialize it with other WRC members in 2012. And then, probably based on priorities, the FCC will have to start the wheels turning. So maybe by 2015, 2016, etc.

Eh, just get on now. Why wait? I've been transmitting down there for the past few years.

Good deal Tom tell the yuppie his beamer will be covered with burning oil

heheheh -  Yep, I'll bet that's what he pictured, along with his precious Junior waiting for the school bus underneath that arcing xfmr... ;D

Ya know, the funny part about this is I first called the electric company two times over a period of a week about it. I got the bum's rush both times. Their main point was why was I complaining about it when I lived a mile away?  I couldn't cornvince them it was that bad.  I guess a phone call from a Yuppie not wanting his house napalmed did the trick.

You can bet I'll use the same approach the next time I locate a nasty arcing - talk to the people closest to it.

T

Recall that the expanded AM band was approved at WARC-79, but another 15 years passed before that first expanded station from Elizabeth, NJ came on the air.

The FCC gave Radiolocation primary status in 1900-2000 sometime in the mid-80s, in order to "re-accommodate" the radiolocation beacons displaced by the expanded band. In a matter of weeks, beacons started showing up in the 160m band, years before any broadcast station appeared in the expanded portion. Fortunately, GPS has pretty much rendered 160m radiolocation obsolete.

Shortly after beacons began moving into 160m, their signals changed from a steady carrier with tone modulation to an unmodulated carrier interspersed with some kind of digital data burst transmission.  At that time, allegedly for security reasons, GPS was deliberately muddled to give it limited resolution on civilian receivers, and I was told that the data bursts on the 160m beacons were encrypted keys to GPS that allowed users to take advantage of the maximum resolution. When the GPS satellites were finally allowed to transmit full resolution in the clear, there was no longer any need for the 160m beacons, and soon they all disappeared.

GPS has become such a ubiquitous consumer gadget that it is highly unlikely they will ever  go back to muddling the signal to the general public.  160m radiolocation will probably never come back in use unless something happens to cause the GPS system to become disabled. Most of the beacon transmitters have by now probably been dismantled.

I'm surprised they didn't go back to muddling GPS following the events of 11SE01.  Since that didn't trigger it, I don't know what else would.

The Europeans are getting closer to firing up Galileo, their own version of world-wide GPS. Free public accuracy to 1 meter.

Our new replacement GPS satellites have their 'munging' capability removed (they say).

Regarding 1715-1800, if it were ever reallocated to amateurs, it would most likely have to be Region 2 only.  In most countries in Europe and Asia, they have other services allocated in that part of the spectrum.  Their hams don't even have full access to 1800-2000, and what they do have is loaded with restrictions.  For example, in UK, unless it has changed in recent years, the legal power limit is 10 watts, although I have heard it said there is more than one 1-kw retired broadcast transmitter on the air over there.

Right after LORAN was taken off and before the BC band was expanded, the entire segment 1600-1800 was packed with beacons, mostly tone-modulated carriers. Now, I never hear more than a half dozen beacons in the entire segment from 1700-1800, usually just one or two, and the rest of the band is empty.  Also, very few signals are heard between the top end of 160m and the 2.5 kc/s WWV.  Apparently, this part of the spectrum is less used in N. America than in the rest of the world.

Reportedly, the majority of the radiolocation beacons were used to keep track of off-shore oil rigs in the Gulf. No doubt now they all use GPS.

The difference between radionavigation (systems like LORAN) and radiolocation is that the former is used to guide ships through the waters, while radiolocation is used to pinpoint a fixed location like an oil rig, sort of a radio buoy or radio lighthouse. GPS can do both, much less expensively (for the end user) than having to build one or more reasonably efficient vertical antennas and run a transmitter at substantial power 24/7.  

When the FeeCee first proposed to move the displaced radiolocation beacons to 1900-2000, one of the providers, a company named Decca, asked for an exclusive reallocation for  radiolocation. They had visions of expanding the service until it completely filled up the band. Instead, amateurs were given secondary status, but now we are about the only users of that segment of the band. If Decca  had got their wishes, 1900-2000 would now be empty spectrum like that portion of the 220 mc/s band that UPS stole from the amateurs but never used.

The expansion of the broadcast band was kind of like the infamous Weapons of Mass Destruction. In preparation for WARC-79, the FeeCee first proposed the expansion in order to open up new spectrum to accommodate "minority broadcasters".  They originally wanted to expand broadcasting all the way up to 1840 kc/s.  By the time the expansion up to 1700 was approved, they had dropped the "minority broadcaster" objective and stated that the reason for the expansion was to relieve congestion in the then-existing band below 1600. I'm not sure that Canada, Mexico or any other country outside the US ever put any stations on the air in the expanded portion.  Canadian AMs have been going dark or relocating to FM for the past couple of decades, so they are losing AM broadcasters, not expanding.

Some stations were allowed to keep their old frequency and simulcast in the expanded band, with the understanding that after a certain period they would have to decide whether or not to move, and either the old frequency or the expanded channel would go dark. But I recall reading that some stations  were lobbying to keep both channels permanently. I doubt that the expansion relieved any of the congestion below 1600.

It sure would be a great class D and E band.

Between the RAK and my "new" RBA  WQ9E is QRV on the receiving side for the new band.  Once standards come out I can plan a suitable transmitter.  I don't think interelectrode capacitance is going to be a transmitting tube issue down there closer to DC than daylight.