IARU Administrative Council Takes Action on 16 Items Oct. 17-18, 2009

[Pete, WA2CWA]

The Administrative Council (AC) of the International Amateur Radio Union (IARU) held its annual meeting on October 17-18, 2009 in Christchurch, New Zealand and took the following 16 actions:
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2009/10/20/11149/?nc=1

[Bill, KD0HG]

I would really enjoy the mentioned LF amateur allocation, around 500 Kc or even 160 Kc.

You could do 500 Kc with an ART-13A that had the LF module.

They oughta mandate that all transmitters used on the LF bands have to be homebrew or boatanchor surplus. Maybe even allow spark one evening a year?

It would put me in an antenna-building frenzy. Can you say, "Variometer"?

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

We had a nice talk with Warren - K2ORS about the 500 kHz and 137 kHz activity. He and several other well known AMers are quite active on one or both of those freqs. Very interesting.

[Vortex Joe - N3IBX]

I for one, would get "Major Wood" over being able to legally operate in the "Lowfer" section, below the AM BC band. Even if only CW, or another digimode, it would be a lot of fun, and a welcomed diversion; even to 160 meters!

Many years ago, I use to run a "Part 15 compliant" little HB rig that put out a strapping 1W, the legal limit on the 169KHZ band. The maxium legal limit was 1W, you could run any mode desired (I ran AM, but it sounded most hyellowy due to the operating freq), and the TOTAL length of your antenna+feedline was a maximum of 50ft. As far as I know, it's still legal to operate in that band per the aforementioned rules.

I never had a contact with it, but it was kinda kewl driving around my neighborhood with a portable receiver listening for my beat note. On a good day, I was able to get out about 1/2 mile or so. Needless to say, most Lowfer ops are in the evening due to enhanced propogation, but efforts to put out a signal were futile due to the increased QRN.

I really hope they open up a VLF band segment to all US Amateur Ops. It'd be quite a new frontier to experiment with, much the same way as the "Ultrahighs" were in the late 20's and 1930's.

FWIW, my VLF rx of choice is a sweet operating regenerative RAK. One can more or less, interpolate from the readings on the two dials and a chart that is included in the operators manual. Very smooth operating, and you don't even get a thump when you first hear a beat note when properly tuned.

[k4kyv]

Problem is, the utilities industry will probably once again lobby the the FCC against it, saying our pissweak longwave signals might interfere with their Part 15 PLC crap and risk shutting down the power grid.  Yet they insist the grid is invulnerable to "terrorists" using similar techniques to deliberately disrupt the grid.

The power grid is either vulnerable to harmful interference from low powered LF and VLF transmitters or it is not.  They need to make up their minds one way or the other and stop trying to have it both ways.

[Bill, KD0HG]

The amazing thing about that lowfer propagation is the insane groundwave.

Here in CO I can hear aircraft beacons as far as 1,200 miles away, during the day. Furthest daytime DX was a 500 watt beacon in northern Ontario, using the 160 M dipole on my end.

Don, that stuff is so obsolete..The electric company I once worked for still had hollow-state PLC gear in service in the '90s. Well, now, that technology is totally obsolete. For 20 years, many electric companies have installed fiber communications systems. They carry the fiber inside one of the grounded conductors on their transmission network. Where their wires go, so can their fiber. The technology costs nothing, stuffing a bundle of fiber inside a line as it is manufactured. You eliminate ground loops and high voltage problems in substations because the fiber in non-conductive.

"Ground" in a substation can sometimes be elevated to a few KV during fault conditions. That used to be a problem with landline telephones. I remember seeing these 50 pound, 600-600 ohm audio isolation transformers in substations to protect analog phone circuits. Rated at 1 watt of audio and 20,000 volts.