Hi Jim, Although frequency co-ordination is a necessary evil too much power absolutely corrupts as in the case of repeater co-ordination groups. If there is a large enough group of people that want to put up D-Star repeaters and you can prove that a frequency pair has not been used for over a year I believe a legal challenge would be appropriate. There are too many people that own pairs that want to sell them and I do not believe that should be allowed. If a repeater is off the air for over a year then they should lose their co-ordination. This is something that should also be put in a form of a Docket for FCC ruling.
73 de K1EG Mike J. Moen wrote: > > > There's little chance of D-Star repeaters replacing analog repeaters > in northern California, and I suspect that's true in many places in > the US. The voting members of our frequency coordination organization > are people who have coordinated repeaters, and of course virtually all > of those are analog repeaters. In parts of the region covered by this > organization, and in particular, the greater San Francisco Bay Area, > all available 2 meter pairs have been assigned, and in the same > region, due to the Pave Paws military radar site, repeaters on the 70 > cm band must run at unusably low power levels. > > Recently the coordinators looked at several proposals to refarm 2 > meters, to create parts of the band that could take advantage of > narrow band modes (this would include D-Star). Some ideas were very > carefully crafted to minimize the number of analog repeaters affected > and how much the few that would need to move would have to move, to > keep down costs. > > The voting members -- again made up almost entirely of people who run > analog repeaters -- voted down all proposals, then passed another > motion prohibiting the issue from being raised for three years. > > During the debate, when there were comments made about the large > number of paper repeaters, or unused repeaters, or very lightly used > analog repeaters, there were angry reactions that amounted to "I have > this pair, and you can't take it away from me." > > I am sympathetic to one argument -- some repeaters exist for EmComm > situations, and of course, for the occassional training nets. Those > repeaters need to be available. But there seems no interest in > sharing those pairs with other repeaters that might be more active, > but which would shut down for EmComm training nets or actual emergencies. > > Bottom line -- in this area at least, coordinations will not be pulled > from existing analog repeaters any time soon, no matter how little > utilized they are. It's just the nature of the Bylaws of the > frequency coordination organization about who gets to vote, and human > nature to not want to change. > > Surprisingly, most of those people carry a digital radio around in > their pocket each day, having replaced their analog cell phone with a > digital one years ago. But digital for ham radio? -- No way. > > Jim - K6JM > > >
