True, you can (or could) still hear CW on the maritime bands since not all countries switched over at the same time. The change actually started years ago. There were a number of large ships sailing without Radio Officers in the early 90's during Gulf War I (the last time I worked on shipboard systems). 1999 was memorable because that was when the US Coast Guard chose to stop monitoring 500 kc/s for emergency traffic.
There were concerns that some interference could result, but even offers to mitigate that, just as we must avoid interfering with the primary users on 60 meter frequencies, weren't enough. At this point the ARRL is handling negotiations for possible future Ham use of frequencies in that part of the spectrum. Our interest was primarily in seeing what sort of ranges we could get using antennas that could be erected on a typical suburban lot, keeping in mind that an ordinary 1/2 wave dipole is 1,000 feet long on 600 meters! Clearly, very short, limited-efficiency antennas would be needed. But the advantages of those frequencies that made them wonderful for maritime - very dependable communications over relatively short ranges irrespective of general "band conditions" - suggested they might be a great alternative to VHF for many uses, including emergency communications. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
