The End of VHF/UHF
Karl Larsen K5DI
March 7, 1999
Last summer the President of ARRL spoke at the Alamogordo NM
Ham-fest and said the ARRL legal team is busy daily around the year
fighting companies that want to co-use or take away our VHF and UHF
Ham bands.
I talked to my Senator Pete Domenici and he said Motorola
and Microsoft are spending big money in congress this year and
pushing "reform of the FCC rules". It is a matter of the greatest
good for the largest number of people that drives Congress.
To get a feel for the kind of money I am talking about,
Microsoft is spending 12 Billion Dollars on their near earth system
and Motorola has spent 9 Billion and is spending at the rate of 2
Billion per year.
It is common to spend 5-10% of a projects money on obtaining
the proper Government lean towards the companies work. So assuming
they use only 5% you still have at least one Billion dollars for
getting Government on your side. That is 1000 Million Dollar bribes
or like that.
Now we Hams have history and a few good lawyers on our side.
We will not be a push-over to beat but the fact is we will lose. I
expect the method will be to "share" frequencies. And after just a
few years we will lose it all.
My guess is the first to go will be the 420-450 MHz band. We
share it with the Defense Dept. and while Defense was strong we were
safe. But now Defense is weaker and I believe industry will get
420-430 MHz in the year 2000.
Then 144-148 MHz will be hit with industry getting 146-148
MHz and this will happen around 2003. As time passes industry will
get more and more until there is no more.
For good technical reasons industry doesn't want the HF
bands. They are noisy and un-reliable and not useful for wide band
data. So my Ham activities are going towards HF, and by accident the
bands are getting better.
The cute idea of using HF packet called PACTOR to send and
receive Internet e-mail to mobile hams looks good and I plan to try
it. Alas at this time the only PACTOR driver I can find is high
priced from Kantronics and WinLink which is free and both run in
Windows 98. I d/l Winlink and it's very nice software. Done in Visual
C and the loader looks like any of the new Microsoft software and it
does run.
Looking at PACTOR II which seems to be the very best HF
system but can't yet get a price from PacComm for the modem. And when
I get the price that may make straight PACTOR more attractive...:-) I
can get a MFJ 1276 "Packet/Pactor controller" for $139.95 from AES
and that is quite cheap. This is what most people are using I think.
I hope someone good at programing gets interested and writes
a driver for Pactor in Linux. I get my Internet e-mail on Linux and
use procmail to sort it. So no problem putting mail to me in a
special place.
Best wishes
- Karl F. Larsen, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (505) 524-3303 -
