The moderator wrote: > [ED - I know the IC91AD and would venture other D-STAR > radios can transmit clear down to the 430 MHz. range - > you are not going to get anything national up in the > 440 MHz. range, so you might look at 431 MHz., you > could probably mark off a few 12.5 kHz. channels and > have them work in large areas of the country. Thinking > outside the box may be handy here.]
I'm not sure I agree with the point that we <sic> may not get something in the 440 MHz range ... A good exercise may be to get the 70cm band plan from every coordinating body and see what would fit. Then get a buy-in from coordinators and get a unified message to the ARRL asking for an established D-STAR national frequency ... a la 146.520 MHz and 446.000 MHz. As for the 430 MHz frequencies ... sure, why not? I'm sure most people are just going to put it in a memory anyway - so what's in a frequency? (though 145.670 MHz *is* easy to remember!) I would strongly recommend staying away from anything between 431 and 433 MHz - that's where we do EME and weak signal work. And also be sensitive to the satellite sub band as well. In the New England plan we have a chunk of bandwidth 433-435 MHz and 438-439 MHz. Wonder if the 439.000 MHz frequency would work in all areas? Bob McCormick W1QA NB My previous posting indicating restricted/banned: please remember that in the US amateur operators are secondary in the entire 70cm band. On Cape Cod (Massachusetts) we have one of the PAVE PAWS radar installations (other remaining sites include W6 and KL7) which takes precedence over our operations on 70cm.
