Murray Niman, G6JYB
RSGB Spectrum Forum Chair Murray Niman, G6JYB provides another informative session on the Ofcom consultation as well as looking ahead to other changes in prospect across HF to microwaves from IARU and the ITU World Radio Conference this autumn. He outlines the RSGB’s response to the Consultation and takes questions about the next steps.
Murray is the chair of RSGB Spectrum Forum which leads on licensing matters with Ofcom as well as IARU and band planning. He is no stranger to the area having previously held the post of Microwave Manager, during 2007-2016, whilst also busy with activity at his local clubs. Murray also has a seat on the Exam Standards Committee.
So this is a talk about offc Comm and Beyond by maray nyman G6 jyb so Murray is going to talk to us about uh an about the ofcom consultation as well as looking ahead to other changes in Prospect across HF and microwaves from IU and from the itu WRC conference this
Autumn he will outline the RS gb’s response to the consultation and take questions about the next steps to give you more opportunity for questions and answers these updates are being held as a forum outside the shter program I supp we know that sorry so Murray is the
Chair of the rsgb spectrum Forum which leads on licensing with ofcom as well as IU and band planning he is no stranger to the area having previously held the post of microwave manager and uh I was also busy with activities at his local Club Murray is also a a a member of the
Exam exam standards committee we are really lucky to have Murray doing this job so well welcome maray thank you uh Stuart so so is that uh I think that’s providing audio so yes I I’ve worn a few hats and that does suggest I’ve ended up
With a few short straws in my time and there’s never a dull moment so a coiner phrase it’s uh the Beyond is not quite to infinity and beyond which was obviously the click in the title but uh ofcom has finished but only the consultation there’s a lot of steps to
Come uh and before we get to the world radio conference which Barry at length mentioned 23 cents but we’ll cover some other issues we travel unfortunately via Serbia for the region one conference and so this talk is in essentially thirds and whether you want to ask questions on
The ofcom bit you know Midway or wait till the end when you hear the rest of the picture is entirely up to you so before I get into this this uh illustrates not only the the elements but in reverse order as uh if you’re in Bar’s talk earlier it’s the itu the international
Telecoms Union that sets our frequency allocations the the you know your frequency schedule in your license classically they don’t get too involved in the Minor Detail below that apart from unfortunately the one of our C current problems so without frequencies there’s no amateur radio so uh you
Either go and get them from an itu walk or you make sure you try not to lose them which is nowadays our priority in these situations that’s then uh gets all coordinated or band planned typically at uh IU level coming down to uh you know National level you have the terms and conditions
That ofcom set and of course we also get some of those band plans tailored at National level in the UK so uh We’ve Ended up in the most unusual year where all three elements are changing with very little certain at this point but all for what’s going to happen over the coming
Weeks and few months we obviously had uh date-wise the uh we could have chosen it better the ofcom consultation launched when all of our GP senior staff were away in Frederick’s Harden in June although we had obviously a bit of a hint as to it coming down the line their launch timing
Was fantastically uh helpful uh the uh that finished in September we’ll obviously cover that in a bit more in a moment if you’re expecting me to give you you all the results I can’t prejudge ofcom I’m not ofcom but you will get a few ins signs they the outcomes from this are
Due around Christmas in the first step at right but first in only a couple weeks time is the region one conference that obviously does take into account all sorts of stuff and we’ll explain the various topic areas uh that uh that’s looking at and it’s not just operational
Stuff there’s shaping the future and strategic stuff in there uh and then we’re only back about 10 days or so and uh uh we have then the world radio conference which runs for a complete month in Dubai which is of course might be warm for that time year but it is not
The cheapest place to stay and uh we’ve had to plan very carefully on the budget for both this one and this one falling into the same Financial year which is uh unprecedented pretty well clearly uh we will’ll want to have a Christmas break so unlike the normal rsgb cycle
Where there’s usually an annual Spectrum for a meeting and reports in late nove in November December so that redcom gets the band plan tweaks for the following year that’s not going to happen we will have to digest all of this and uh review it early after Christmas and uh it’s not
The only thing that causes a timing issue so on that note we’ll get into ofcom so if you were to read the ofcom consultation there are 100,000 licenses in issue which is quite a good number uh but of course people hold multiple ones and there’s some uh
Club licenses in that list but uh when you strip the duplicates out it’s still quite a good number it says in fact depending on where you read between 68 and 76,000 but in the consultation they refer to 71,000 still quite a good number in terms of per head of population by European standards
Actually whether or not all 70,000 are alive and active is a very interesting question but we do know 20,000 of them are because there’re R sgb members and you can so so let let’s assum and there are silent c Keys declared to ofcom so so each year we see
Roughly a thousand uh silent Keys mainly in the full licenses uh being cancelled out by uh you know families declaring so uh let’s say there may be 60,000 s still alive but they may not all be active we in fact in a typical year we get more full new full licenses from people
Reactivating their license than we do from the exam system in fact we don’t need the exam system we just need to keep recycling all folk controversially but in the end the the number who actually got round to writing out the ofcom reply form and submitting
It was around 1,400 so on the one hand you could say 1,400 versus 70,000 is a very modest percentage on the other hand that’s one of the highest response rates that’s offc con has had in years in fact the last highest one was also an old amateur consultation so it’s given their
Assessment stuff and their Web Master a real headache because normally the the they they promise to publish the responses not not their conclusions relatively quickly but they’re between us driving uh the publicity to get people to reply and the fact that they made their form more complex than they
Should have done on yeah you could have privacy on every individual question rather than you know just your name or All or Nothing that’s made itth quite awkward for them to fulfill their obligation to be transparent and published we we expect well no you can either have lots
Of abstract know PDFs with bits uh knocked out or what we may see is one massive spread sheet which is because the reason there was a very strong preference to use their form was to automate the processing because they don’t have the staff and they’re trying
To use a bit of AI to sift and Cate it the uh so from our point of view if you’re one of the 1400 thank you very much if you weren’t well you’ve missed your chance for the most part so hands up who replied that’s a good percentage in the
Room hands up if you didn’t and was that because you didn’t have time assumed we would do it or something else well I discussed it in a local club members someone put a thing forgot to put oh right so was there a club response itself or were individual
Members was individual yeah so so we we yeah well that’s know if I had that percentage across all 70,000 we we’d have done really well but actually 1400 was very very close to my 1500 for because there was a bit of a discussion on Logistics when as they opened it
Saying how are you going to C and the ofcom were very very keen to understand how we were going to communicate to the ametis and are we going to offer a uh you know a template with pre-prepared answers and uh we knew that was not the
Way to do it in fact C know as we said in one of the early videos anything like copycat answers would be dropped that they have no value so the fact that we’ve driven that number of individual responses there’ll be a few C and other organizational ones in there but the
Fact that those are genuinely independent replies actually works better now the fact that whether or not ofcom agree or disagree with every individual point because you could say some of these consultations just rubber stamp what they’re proposing in the first place is another matter but uh nonetheless some of them were okay some
Of them were uh quite detailed done pick you up on one thing Mar you said that that was the highest response to has had in a long well apart from as an absolute number or as a percentage of the potential stakeholders it’s not as an absolute
Number because if you go back to the lifetime license which had the Grim Reaper of death uh s rather negative rsgb PR around it in the 20052 2006 consultation that that was higher actually not much higher but it was higher but uh in terms of uh considered individual responses C certainly in
Spectrum consultations which this came under this is a high one without a doubt uh you know compared to some of their ofcom you know media complaints type stuff where they get thousands of people complaining about some TV personality you know that’s neither here no there I’m not counting that one the the other
Thing of course is it wasn’t just your Li remember this wasn’t just your license conditions this was also the rest of the framework and it’s that part which uh hadn’t really been consulted on before and is where a lot of the policy reset and grayness has been right okay anyway so that’s that
Bit so what’s the timing and next steps now so uh the first bit of timing which I haven’t put up there but I did mention is before the consult ation finished ofcom’s expert on this who wrote the consultation had already retired so we have met the very nice new folk
Who’ve come in who are not totally new to radio one of them worked in the Spectrum licensing uh group who are based in Warrington question presentation what political brief do they have none offc come are firstly independent of government and politics but that’s Theory no no I I they don’t
Like being pressured by politicians I can assure you in the past uh in fact uh just deviating there have been occasions where individual amors have gone off to their MP to you know Lobby for some noov or issue you know whether it’s a EMC noise or where’s my repeater license or
Some other things and I can assure you that’s the guarantee to wind them up they are of all the Regulatory Agencies they’re probably the most independent because they are only responsible to Parliament they are not directly governed by any government department they have a sponsored Department which has moved around over time it’s
Currently the new Department of for science Innovation it used to be dcms but uh yeah they they’re given lots of Duties by Parliament but in terms of governance and policy there’s a framework in the communications act which is their governing principles but I won’t say they make it up as they go
Along but here here the uh they they went to they have gone through a lot of effort to understand what ameters do and nowadays want to do and uh well if you looked at that consultation you could see they’ obviously had some background it was better it was far
Better written than the 2015 one where effectively they had to back track on some of the call sign policy for example and uh who was here at the rsgb convention years ago when the opcom rep stood up and tried to present that yes so so I’m glad so there were a few which
Was the first attempt at the rsl’s thing which did not go down too well uh they uh learned from that lesson they they retreated a little bit on the day but that they were determined to come back on it as you probably realized l yes we absolutely need to point out that
It was not us that instituted that yes it wasn’t our idea but anyway so so they are working very hard to uh read very carefully all the 1400 plus 1401 which was theirs in the first place and so does it fit or not tick uh we certainly obviously had the
Odd conversation but the they got they approached it from a very legal Prejudice point of view so anything yeah we might have the odd coffee with them is confidential but we can tell where they’re sort of focusing and one of the aims of this entire consultation was to save
Themselves work a lot of that work was coming from the sheer numbers of NOS thousands of noov in issue and per year technically uh so we don’t pay off Comm penny where you could say a burden to the regulator but they they’re doing us a good few favors but uh to ensure that
The new license incorporates as much and has fewer exceptions around this area we we do expect a few tweaks in those definitions there there’s other sort of you could say non-spectral issues like there was a change or potential change to the concept of user Services because someone thought oh well let’s simplify
The the writing here we expect uh that to sort of be changed again to sort of reassure that sector but not in the way it was originally written so uh because it’s outdated so a few things around the technical and one of two areas we’ve got
A few hints at but anything to do with call sign policy anything to do with call sign policy they won’t say a thing and that generally means we’re assuming as we have done that most of this will come to pass other parts might get some useful
Treats to to be honest other than some of the call sign policy the vast majority of it is very welcome change in modernization but uh issuing the statements is only the first part of a quite a effort what happens is as almost probably accompanying that statement
Will be what’s known as a notice of vary now th this this happened in 200 six and I think might have happened it wasn’t quite the same with the EMF regs but uh so they issue their conclusions and then the draft license that was in the original consultation document if that
Been tweaked which it probably has been that will be put out under a shter notice period so it’s not reopening the entire consultation it is merely the comments on the implementation because the policy has been decided it’s just have we have they got the small print and definitions spot
On and that that’s where you know if you’ve got some weird noov that don’t quite fit or you spot typo Etc that that’s fine but it’s not a rewrite period that but nonetheless that there could still be the odd tweak so formally you won’t be on new license
Terms till the end of quarter one next year probably it’s this is approximate but if you read the consultation they’re still aiming for this I think that’s a reasonable guess okay that’s for individual amers that doesn’t automatically fix the thousands of NOS for repeaters and stuff
And that’s only the start of the story so they’re doing it on their current slightly flaky it system did I say flaky uh what ful it system that uh being a sort of third party manager one only has limited flexibility so that with for other reasons they’re planning to replace it
So changes that can be done by minor piddling around such as for example altering the intermediate call signs for new intermediates from two series to M8 for example yeah that that’s a minor edit in the data tweaking of they go they’ll have to in conjunction with
Us notify or change all the noov holders some of them will be uh staying in OV mode some of them will be in a sort somewhat different mode because half their terms now inside the main license but their call signs are still and the co proof of coordination still comes
From us so uh it’s a interesting thing there and some of those finer terms around those are going to be amended because uh they were a bit uh sort of naive in the first draft now that licensing platform is what you log on to to you know revalidate your
License or apply for a special event station Etc the first big tip is make sure you are got your details on there and revalidated because when they come to not just attempting to notify you but more important importantly transferring that database onto the new system you don’t want to be left behind otherwise
It’ll be hard work and the amount of stuff at Warrington on the phone desk when the other 58,000 amers ring them up may be a bit Limited in fact there’s maor Logistics issue associated with what is perceived to be a rush or waiting list of intermediates keen to
Change their call signs as well so uh that’s all done as part of the sort of phase two you know after March but not too quickly you know some some of those noov things have to be done relatively quickly uh phase three uh the the this is this wording is
Taken from their original documentation but it’s worth uh playing through is where you really need the uh new it to be around so the ability to log on and change your call sign entirely which was one of the options in there uh hopefully not every two years but nonetheless it
It know that that’s serious new programming some of the specially event station stuff becomes a bit easier when you get to phase three as well because that that’s a very new sort of call sign format so uh th this is their next financial year which is April onwards
Essentially but uh this stuff happens you know relatively quickly the other thing which is being barely mentioned is all the guidance and there’s two lots of guidance there’s the ofcom guidance and there’s rsgb guidance it all has to be Rewritten no one’s even thought about starting that part yet question is the
Financial whatever is needed for R consider going into election next year and as to uh oh I can’t so I can’t answer the ring fence question but that they’ve already consulted and had approved on their annual plan that uh part and and it’s not purely amateur the
Uh amers are not the single biggest Lumpa licensing uh Business Radio small boat marine some of the liary article the that platform has to coope with hundreds of thousands of lenses of different categories they know they’ve got some issues there and I guess that yeah compared to some of their other
Stuff that they’re just going to have to get on with it so my question is they will have to do face they aren’t going to be able to turn around and go oh you know no no it’s merely the timing and of course we may not be high in the pecking
Order compared to people who are paying money for their licenses but something has to happen right it’s also has to happen with fewer and fewer people involved because they often retire all the experience isn’t there so uh yes right so without getting into ultra fine know
Is it this clause or that Clause that’s what we can say there there is one area though which I’ve mentioned where it was in the consultation but I thought I’d cover this because uh they’re still thinking hard about how what wider net they can draw to simplify
And get rid of some of this stuff so the consultation had various things associated with novs notices A variation if for those of you who don’t like acronyms and a great goal was in principle to wipe out every noov but not the process associated with etcc okay because you get both new ones
And renewals and site mve so that that generates a fair volume even though we do most of the work for them nonetheless before ofcom to find and issue them it still work likewise all the special event stations although if you log in the simple special event stations you you can log
In and get one in about five minutes flat in practice an awful lot of amors contact them by email and it’s manual interaction for special special event stations which are like the very long call sign ones there that’s an entirely manual process so uh this is an area they’ve been
Desperate to automate for quite a while and consultation referred to a single merged GB what digits and letters format we welcome that it will be know provided one you know your favorite GB is available it’ll be a very flexible system the it will remove the requirement to be a public event amongst
Other things it’s uh but that that clearly is in that sort or I doubt they’ll be able to do it with the current software they may be able to do some because clearly some of it online but not necessarily all of it so that generates a fair old volume you only
Have to look in radcom each week or gb2 RS to see you know good few SS’s and quite at least half of those all have been manually processed so if they can get rid of hundreds of those transactions per week and hundreds of uh etcc transactions per week that will uh
Leave them happier there there’s a whole pile of others as well so although uh how many Keen contesters are here anyone to know what an secc is short contest call signs yes so they were in the ofcom consultation they said oh we we’ll leave those as is well sorry we weren’t very
Happy with that CU we were hoping to get change in any case so uh and it and it’s something that because we Pro or in Po and cod sort process most of them the amount of understanding in ofcom particularly now that our sort previous experts moved on
There’s bit a bit of a gap there there’s uh other ones where effectively rsgb provides the platform like the the news readers noov the celebratory rsl’s one which they did consult on and should become a license condition there’s the spectral ones where uh some of these
Vary with the process and the term so the 146 one is the have they have to be done annually on block the other ones are rolling but we we run those as a service for ofcom essentially without Spectrum licensing so whilst the policy people remember this the Spectrum licensing
Folk didn’t have a clue so so having the entire picture looked at by the new staff so they get the whole picture is also part of this sort of thinking they’re trying to do at the moment and of course some of these do change over time we’re after a still after a vlf
Facility for example and then there’s some stuff that isn’t amateur amateurs do things that aren’t amateur so whether it’s rainet use of Business Radio or innovation and trial licensing that you pay for which is how a c of 40 Meg Enthusiast go about things that’s fine and uh special research permits there’s
Only a few of these done per year but they’re the very high power ones typically for em but uh the records of them especially the early ones are not very good and they don’t have you know nice expiry dates on them which is a bit of an
Embarrassment so so they have to capture the the entire picture anyway so so there there’s work to be done we uh obviously if we’re heading off to serban uh sort of world radio conference funny enough with a load of ofcom Staff it’ll be down to the people left behind to obviously work out
What they’re going to do so I look forward and wish them the best right now you’ve seen ofcom’s next steps rsgb has got to do a few as well so coming soon literally in days perhaps uh we’ve had to start work early on the mods to the exam syllabus for
Example so clearly all the license conditions change by default the new any new syllabus has to be ready before you can write books training material put six months notice out for it to come into effect all all the plava if you work it that timeline back as uh Allan knows uh
It started about a month or so back didn’t it uh need to say as per Tony Kent’s video that we had three videos by the way during this the third one did have Tony Kent who manages exams and we made plain at that point but I’m just emphasizing it here that we’re only
Going to change the license conditions that may also include some operating aspects which are affected by those S conditions but all the rest of it staying as is whether you like it or not that will still leave a lot of thinking around you know future directions for the syus down stream but
Uh there’s only so many people left with hours in the day to do these things the other thing we have already indicated in that Community is some of the call sign stuff especially if it’s rsls or intermediate calls Etc or even the SEC tweaks may not come until say
March April or whenever by then the 2024 contest season will have already started so the current rule set will have to apply even though the licensing conditions for operating under those rules will uh sort of change mid well it’s not Midway but perhaps a third of the way if rsls potentially go optional
The contrast rules will say thou shalt use your RSL so so it keeps it an Asis situation during 2024 uh but by the end of the year hope end of next year then they’ll obviously see if it needs adjusting in practice when we have the contest committee
Looked at this it was very very little in HF contest that actually was RSL dependent slightly different inhf but not not as much as people were worried about clearly the anov changes affects uh etcc uh quite markedly in places uh they’ve already done one service mod quietly already and will potentially
Offer a new self-coordination service so if you’re up to 5 wats Erp the uh the new Arrangements basically leave you pretty free and of course gateways low power whisper beacons and a few other things fall into that category the uh but of course people still like downloading listings checking if there’s
An appropriate frequency B plan guidance Etc so how we offer that service but more as a sort of voluntary or self-registration service is being looked at once you’re above 5 Watts it’s a fairly traditional arrangement I have to say other than the sort closed down and per yeah you’re you’re getting a
Call sign as a a badge of authorization and coordination rather than a variation to your license but if you are challenged on oh it’s causing interference because you’re in the wrong part of the band plan because you’ve been a bit stupid and you don’t have the evidence
Of going through the process then you get caught so even though it’s not an noov there’s subtle wording and in fact some quite strong wording depending on which elements you’re looking at in the new conditions that manage yeah qu the quite large change they’ve done there it’s all about interactive
Information though as well and we know the the it platform that etcc sits on is a bit bespoke and isn’t very mobile friendly so there’s a lot of volunteer work and maybe some investments in that area as well we they’ve recruited a new data chap actually who’s got some good
Background so interesting to see how that comes along but uh and then now Spectrum Forum overall coordination point for spectrum licensing band plans clearly as I mentioned earlier we will not have a chance we’ll want the Christmas break quite frankly so we’ll uh return uh in January
There will be in the VHF area a partial redesign so some of the newer 5 wat stuff is going to be on segregated channeling we are not going to have a mixture of ad hoc popup repeaters on the top of no the main repeaters for example that that’s just recipe for chaos we
Need to give good guidance as part of this coordination quite frankly our Simplex frequencies aren’t used as much as they ought to be some of them will be uh redesignated I suspect but uh what we need to do is also see what this process is going to do to
Us right I think that may be it on off com right any any other questions on ofcom excuse my ignorance is there going to be or hasn’t been don’t has a kind of feedback to members saying those that contribut on make comments has been listened to worthwhile because one of the things
That struck me yesterday which I wasn’t quite shocked about is that it’s about the power of this organization that where we get one3 new licenses join our correct which I think is something that near any marketing organization would address that urgently and that surely has an impact on what ofon does
To some degree you’re you’re you’re you’re right and wrong that I don’t expect that ratio to change by the way you don’t no the the Spectrum forum is actually the responsible Organization for the demographics and strategic direction of the Hobby in terms of numbers the exam stats have along with
The membership stats have been showing either that Ratio or the upgrade ratios being relatively static for a decade or more quite frankly so the only way to address the shear numbers and growth issue is how do you reach out wider at the Baseline remove what we’ve done at
Particularly at Foundation level is we have wiped out every possible hurdle that we can think of in the foundation license okay supervision Airborne home construction you name it it’s been wiped out we’ve added Wi-Fi to making w w SP maker spaces that groundwork will was part of that
Thinking it is for you know development and other Outreach to exploit and build on those huge opportunities but that part won’t change we will not have seen unless someone’s copied it to us we have not seen what other people have put in how many copies did you receive do you know
How we we only got a handful of direct bits of feedback to ourself okay we we there’s two things one is we deliberately drove people to respond individually B we didn’t have that much bandwidth for coping with you know too many inquiries but interestingly and I know Steve Thomas isn’t here the the
Mailbox wasn’t quite as busy as you think actually mine was Qui than we thought watch yeah the uh but we were holding in addition to the public video stuff we were running team sessions with all all the quite a number of the sectors as well so if people had copied
Us their response fine but most people didn’t so we’re we’re just as interested in what’s happening here all we can say is thank you to those who did know get that pen out or you know do a bit of typing we will see right anyway moving
On in order for us to uh make progress there’s a few of things which are highly relevant particularly this one in some respects uh Co had disrupted the uh the classical threeyear cycle for IU region one conferences however we returned to uh the first physical event in years
Unfortunately it’s in a slightly tricky to get to place but we’ve sorted out our Logistics in zore in Serbia not on rsgb Wanted list I have to say uh as I’ll show in a minute the scope of uh this meeting is considerable a lot of papers well in
Fact we were called for inputs papers are online uh as you’ll discover in a moment we got very little feedback from members but uh I don’t blame you sometimes the materials a bit dry but nonetheless it can be influential the uh budgets are always an interesting one because a proportion of
Everyone’s membership fee goes to it it supports both amiter growth and Spectrum defense so Barry L’s time in IU for example or CPT is funded out of that sort of percentage rake off from all the members societies the uh General committee looks at General policy fun enough takes ownership of some of the
Spectrum stuff there’s uh some of you may have heard of this sort of shaping the future effort on future development projects uh there’s also things like radio some of the radio sports and contest stuff uh tend to fall into this area and quite frankly we as R sgb we
Already on record and in print having some serious concerns in parts of this area whereas some of the other stuffs very welcome of course so it’s always a bit swinging certain roundabouts uh at C4 which is H HF for the past two and a half years there’s been a plan for a new
HF Global band plan which is a minor tweaking at the edges although others would say otherwise because of course fd8 and it’s not just fd8 has emerged and uh that’s seeking uh more not so much vast amounts of more room but harmonized spot so no matter where
You are in the world everyone ends up on the same sort of harm onized frequencies and that that’s quite difficult to manage classically any given region only meets once every three years they meet on different years so if you want a proposal that harmonizes all of them
It’s a long cycle or you come up with a slightly different approach the uh we’ll mention this in a bit more the all the side sets for these are online in case you’re wondering uh C5 at above 30 Megs VHF UHF shf clearly the although this is
Before Well Radio conference the 23 SS topic will guaranteed to feature in that the uh we propos some other changes ourselves in 7ss and 23 CS already I think most of the other modernizations been done there’s traditionally rsgb has put a lot of work into C5 to support mainly emerging
Digital stuff and if anyone was in sort my friend Mr louder’s talk earlier or his next one in about qu hour’s time then uh yes that’s hard work you don’t see many papers but things like the noise measurement project said you didn’t get many member respons what is the the process by which
These are communicated uh well it helps if you either the the process is it’s been in I’ll show you in a moment it’s uh been in radcom this year once gb2 RS twice social media twice and it’s we’ve done all that in two previous years as well yeah it’s exactly the same proposal
But now it’s come to voting time so in some respects people get bored of it and uh the initial shock or Novelties worn off you might say having said that the question is are the assumptions are made in 2021 still valid for 2023 onwards and that’s where I have a slight concern but
If you go off and whether it’s on RS gb’s IU consult ation page or on the downloads all the links are at the End by the way then uh you’ll get a load of slides but uh We’ve summarized them in a slightly sort I would say controversial
But yeah in your- face manner here that to rebalance the arrangements it’s only small bits of kilohertz in general from either side Mo mostly from SSB but occasionally is no it is the CW bit as well occasionally those changes and the principles behind them so the slice gives you a planning
Principle it’s absolutely Joe Taylor modes only now if that was the only thing that was going to happen to amra radio and they weren’t going to produce any new modes that might work as far as we’re concerned we don’t think that’s a very good basis for planning we’ve already got digital voice
From the commercial radios you know from d Fusion what have you in parts of the HF bands they tune all the way down we have deliberately introduced digital ATV into 10 MERS as part of you know some very uh impressive experimentation there with a goal of crossing the Atlantic in
High definition video on HF we’ve almost done that with the conditions but uh as the technology improves that might be uh revolutionary almost and of course 10 meters has got the bandwidth to play as opposed to the lower bands so uh we don’t think this is ultra future proof we want to keep
It open perhaps to other stuff that might come along without totally squeezing you know traditional use so on the most recent one well we had put out those reminders I mentioned officially we did not get one single reply now that might come to a shock to you but that’s what
Happened so we are apart from some refinements largely expected this to be nodded through if it is then these HF band plan tweaks will be included in the New Year’s process along with the VHF implications of the ofcom stuff for example right not much left I’m going to
Keep this one short but prettier so will radio conference coming up apart from 23 cm there’s uh some serious other big items that will get headlines elsewhere so there’s the potential uh well quite frankly the potential end of UHF TV as we know it as more and more of it moves gradually
Towards mobile broadband Spectrum there’s certainly an awful lot of uh satellite issues and you know the 5G people are already thinking about the next G quite frankly so so the the there’s always that stuff going on we we’ve already lost most of our relevant Spectrum to the mobile
Folks so actually our greatest issues are science climate and of course our navigation challenge is actually more of a problem for us than the mobile broadband items this time around so whilst the top priority is uh know obviously Barry is going to continue to spend lots of valuable time on this band
Uh the summary is there will be no new amateur proposals for spectrum there haven’t been for a while apart from from rationalizing 6 MERS and there won’t be for a generation because it is too expensive and too difficult just to hold on to every current piece of Hertz we’ve got at the
Moment there are a couple of other concerns So Below this headline is any six meter group members here ah one they they know about this this gem so climate change one of the requirements is to see where all the water is or how thick the ice is uh they’re going to fly actually
This antenna is small the full thing’s nine elements long and there’s a cluster of them running Broadband radar pulsing waveforms across 40 to 50 Megs and the outer band emissions stretch out a bit more which is ever so helpful uh especially if you’re wanting to use 50
MHz DX the uh fortunately after a lot of uh toing and throwing the whilst the spectral width of these hasn’t shrunk that much it’s mainly going to be done at about 300 or 4:00 in the morning where hopefully you’re not doing too much Amit radio but uh of course if there’s some
Sprad key on which happens to funn the propagation over to the other side of the world it may not be 3 or 4 in the morning over there so uh yes but you know the the people dream these things up the antenna is bigger than the satellite how anyone on a practical
Engineering point of view can work that one out I do not know but they’re going to fly them and uh the other one which is uh was a late start but is a potentially nuisance one is one that classically we’ve got quite an interest in which is what makes propagation change space
Weather and uh because it’s on government risk registers now because if you get a nasty solar surge it knocks out all your satellite navigation amongst other things uh it’s uh the scientists have jumped on another political priority to get themselves some uh essentially uh almost the new itu service and primary allocations
Potentially for all their sensors the first part of it is defining what is a space Weather Service don’t have a great issue with that that’s what F enough 91a as opposed to 91b will do not not a great issue where the problem is is all the frequencies in use so uh there’s
Stuff across HF and low VHF and unfortunately for us our French colleagues have been as helpful as ever and instead of using 52 to 54 they deliberately have dropped it into our part of 6 meters so our concern here is if you’ve got a a big receiving ground
Station area it might they may say well protect it we need a 50 km exclusion zone of any of the 6 meter users for example so uh yes that that does concern us a little bit but there aren’t too many of those unless you’re in Ireland or
Netherlands oh yeah the the the yeah the proposals for the frequencies vary significantly between the regions trying to get the list down to size is being the challenge so so we don’t quite know yet anyway so the short summary is between ofcom I itu we haven’t had many dull
Moments this year and there won’t be many in over the next few weeks but we hope you found this Insight useful thank you Mar are there any questions yes Don just ask I like good ones I’m not known for being controversial um the the impression I
Get is looking in from the outside into the UK is that the ofcom consultation to a significant extent there are elements in there that came bit as as a bit of a surprise how would you characterize the uh strategic relationship between the society and ofcom on the um uh adversarial to collaborative
Spectrum so I don’t mind saying that we’ve been more collaborative than adversarial because uh for them to put out a consultation with a surprising amount of background knowledge on it no they that didn’t come from nowhere that they were interested in our views of what amers do and what we thought of
Those current very aging license conditions now uh we haven’t some of that was you know unofficial liaison you won’t see see Mega meetings with minutes or anything but uh most it was all very uh you know good natured I think it’s fair to say know clear clearly when it got to rsls
Uh a number of board members are very proud of their rsls but we H we realized that if you’re going to have a you know disagreement over that sort of stuff where we know it’s important for some folk you couldn’t do it on regulatory or technical grounds they’ve got no purpose
At all so in that se you’ll have noticed we had to use very clever language around uh identity knowing that ofcom have a duty to the individual Nations y okay but uh no it’s been very good natured good thanks thank you any other questions thank you um Mar a question
About um the IU ban plan the proposed changes to put a bit more space in for data um at the Spectrum Forum meeting last year um myself and one other person who was representing vmar pointed out um or expressed an opinion that the bottom end of 80 mters was much less heavily
Occupied than the than the top bit above 3.6 and we both felt that um if there was to be an expansion of data modes into an adjacent bit of the band logically it ought to move down into the CW segment rather than up into SSB but
Um we were the only two people to express any opinion on that and I’m just wondering if if that’s been completely forgotten or whether it’s being taken on board so we haven’t really been involved in the people who dreamt this up in green shells had some connection with it
But it was a very tight-knit committee and it was very Joe Taylor orientated as I said so for example you know psate 31 users or other ad hoc data mode users uh some of the Q qrp and other stuff not RAR considered they when you look at the
Proposals you do see various levels of detail and they start to analyze where some of these things fall but I have to say and ironically we were due to have one of the senior leads on that planning who who’s Australian with us and he s sadly couldn’t make it to the convention
This weekend because we do believe although it’s a bit late in the day in terms of practical usage and where it might grow some of it might want another final look but the this no doubt that you know digital has grown and seeks some certainty in the band plan I think
It’s fair to say okay any last question right I think we’re sort of out of time anyway so thank you very much Mari can we thank maray again in the usual way it’s all work
2 Comments
Lots covered and a useful insight. Thanks Murray.
very useful presentation – thank you for sharing this.