630 meters

[N4LTA]

Kevin

Have fun down there. The limited bandwidth will limit some activity. I had a great time when my experimental license was valid. There is really no reason a much wider band should not be made available.

Pat
N4LTA

[k2ors]

I started on 500kHz about 15 years ago under an experimental license, first as WD2XSH/23 and then under my own license WE2XGR. WE2XGR was (and still is) authorized to run 1kW ERP from 460-515 kHz. For a while there was a Sunday evening sked on 510kHz ssb (upper sideband), the stations involved were Bob W2ZM, Jay W1VD, John W1TAG, Eric NO3M, and myself. Bob, Jay, John and I were under the WE2XGR license, Eric had has own. Bob W2ZM was the strapper, he ran a 3CX3000 homebrew amplifier with a couple of kW out into a top loaded 90' vertical with a 309' horizontal wire capacity hat. Bob once had a cross-mode QSO with Finbar O'Connor EI0CF in Malin Head Ireland, Bob was on ssb and Finbar was on CW. This was likely the only trans-atlantic ssb contact on that band.  I was the piss-weaker on Sunday nights with 100W into a 70 ft high vertical with 162' horizontal wire capacity hat (my dipole with the feeders shorted and fed through a tapped coil against a cold-water pipe ground).

These days I sometimes run CW into an on-ground dipole under my ham call on 472.5, occasionally I will run WSPR.

It's pretty much a waste of time to run AM under the ham rules due to the low power and limited bandwidth unless you have a buddy across town you want to work.

73 & HNY
Warren K2ORS

[k2ors]

I got my 'authorization' in email form this morning. So it looks like I'll be able to "get on" the new band.

Wow!  I just received an approval email back from UTC.org.  Specifically, they said I was approved because:

   Careful UTC does NOT authorize or approve amateur operation on 630 meters! They can only object to such operation. Only the FCC can "authorize" or "approve" operation! This is an important distinction ! We don't want to ceed authority to an industry group like UTC!


73 Warren K2ORS

[Opcom]

@ N1BCG:

I like that transmitter there.. all those meters!

[WB2EMS]

Quick update.

Last night was a wild night on 630 by all accounts. Lots of QSB but several folks had their best ever night according to the chat on Slack. I missed most of it, but got on for a bit at the end of the day. Hopefully tonight will be good as well. Apparently there was an ssb roundtable down south for a while.

So far I'm being heard about halfway across the country and down to Georgia on WSPR with 5 watts out of the ANAN200D. I've made 4 JT9 contacts, and will probably make more once I stop stepping on my crank while trying to run the program!   

Tonight I'm going to play around with a flex 1500 with an eye to using it on the band, and pairing it up with one of the K5DNL amps. I'm worried I might be stressing the ANAN running it down at that frequency, but so far it hasn't acted up.

Retuned the antenna a bit. Very odd to be making adjustments by trimming off yards of wire instead of inches, or fractions thereof.  First cut I trimmed it 21 yards. Then 4 yards. Looks like I need another yard and a half off to hit 474 khz. "Antenna here is a 1.2 furlong dipole at 8 feet...."

Fun so far....

[W3RSW]

wow! over 40 rods.
quite a spread.

-more seriously, looks like some neat contacts.

"Chain!"  yelled at over 10 runouts, new mark for the rodman.

[KA0HCP]

I got my 'authorization' in email form this morning. So it looks like I'll be able to "get on" the new band.

Wow!  I just received an approval email back from UTC.org.  Specifically, they said I was approved because:

   Careful UTC does NOT authorize or approve amateur operation on 630 meters! They can only object to such operation. Only the FCC can "authorize" or "approve" operation! This is an important distinction ! We don't want to ceed authority to an industry group like UTC!


73 Warren K2ORS

UTC has de facto approval of 2200m/630m operations. They can "object" to any application, thereby denying it. There is no appeal process to the FCC.  There is no public reporting of their decisions, and no public oversight.  

-UTC controls low band operations for all practical purposes.

*I'm not a rabble-rouser, nor a conspiracy theorist; merely stating facts.  The FCC once again has abandoned its' regulatory responsibilities and ceded them to an industry organization.  The public interest is not protected and amateurs have no method for redress of grievances or due process.   De-regulation of government is running to absurdity.

[KK4YY]

I got my 'authorization' in email form this morning. So it looks like I'll be able to "get on" the new band.

Wow!  I just received an approval email back from UTC.org.  Specifically, they said I was approved because:

   Careful UTC does NOT authorize or approve amateur operation on 630 meters! They can only object to such operation. Only the FCC can "authorize" or "approve" operation! This is an important distinction ! We don't want to ceed authority to an industry group like UTC!


73 Warren K2ORS

UTC has de facto approval of 2200m/630m operations. They can "object" to any application, thereby denying it. There is no appeal process to the FCC.  There is no public reporting of their decisions, and no public oversight.  

-UTC controls low band operations for all practical purposes.

*I'm not a rabble-rouser, nor a conspiracy theorist; merely stating facts.  The FCC once again has abandoned its' regulatory responsibilities and ceded them to an industry organization.  The public interest is not protected and amateurs have no method for redress of grievances or due process.   De-regulation of government is running to absurdity.

We can use the 2200m/630M on a secondary/non-interference basis or not at all. Up until a few years ago, it was not at all.
It's absurd to believe that was somehow better!

[WB2EMS]

I find it odd that some folks apparently get responses from them, and others, like me, just get crickets. In my case no news is good news I suppose, but that inconsistency does make me wonder.

I do get that the FCC should be the gatekeeper, not some industry entity with no recourse.

Amp should be here Friday. Got some more antenna tuning to do some evening or weekend. Need to move it up from 470 to 475 to center on the frequencies in use which for me are primarily the jt9 and WSPR window 800-1400 above the 474.2 carrier frequency.

Going to change over the station from using the ANAN200D to using a flex 1500 in transverter mode driving a K5DNL 200 watt non linear amplifier. The Flex seems to hear as well as the ANAN though I want to do better comparisons.

I tried my pixel pro loop on 630 the other day with the flex and didn't hear much of anything. I need to check it on other frequencies and with the ANAN. It might be a good option for lower noise receiving but not if it's deaf down there. OTOH, I just moved it before the test and maybe something like the new cable isn't happy, though it did power up the amp very clearly by the increase in background noise.

Hoping to make a few more QSOs tonight.

[WU2D]

I got my authorization about a year ago and built up a transmitter, but too busy to get a serious antenna up and try it out! So zero on air experience with the 2 new bands. But expect magic.

I can say that my lowfer beacon on 187 kHz back in 1991-92 with 1 Watt input power and a legal antenna was one of the great learning experiences of my hamming. I started out with an ice chest with a CMOS oscillator divider into an IRF-510 at 1 Watt Input Power. The tank coil was #12 enamelled wire on a 6 inch form and the loading coil was also large. I started with a simple wire up in a tree vertical with a few radials and a ground rod. I barely got across my yard! DX!

When I finally figured out I needed more efficiency in the antenna, and got hold of a RF mA Meter, improvements started. The final form of the 50 ft "legal" antenna was a diamond cage with a giant top hat made of a 15 ft diameter circle of 75 Ohm Hardline, suspended by 4 ropes into the Pine trees. It looked like a giant wagon wheel with a diamond cage below it. The center spreaders were bamboo poles. And then I started sinking radials. Everything I did increased the current! 

In the end of the experiments, I was being heard. In fact I had a homebrew superhet in the car with a 4.3333333333333 MHz ladder filter and an upconverter and a 3 ft active whip and out of the speaker I could easily hear my beacon 35 miles away in Massachusetts going 60 MPH on 495.  So 5 Watts EIRP OUTPUT? on 500 kHz? Dude

[WB2EMS]

I've been reading about and listening to Lowfers for years and listened to some of the special license stations (W2ZM is about 50 miles from here and used to be very strong) but had never managed to get off the dime to do anything. When 630 opened up I decided to dip a toe in the water and see. I don't know that I'll ever get on 2200m, maybe if I'm feeling masochistic sometime. But 630 is fun so far.

Based on the EZNEC calculations, my antenna gain is about -16.1 db, so for 5 watts TPO, I'm at about 100 mw EIRP and being heard halfway across the country. Pretty impressive. Of course it's the middle of winter in a sunspot null, this may be the best it will be for years, who knows. This weekend I'm going to rearrange the temporary shack to get the amp and the flex1500 on and see how it goes. Initially I'll just be running on 14 volts, so about 50 watts TP0, maybe a watt EIRP. We'll see what adding 10 db to the system does. Most stations are giving me reception reports 10-15 db below how I'm hearing them, so that should put me on a more equal footing.