144-146 2m band in danger? Re-allocation request submitted by France for current CEPT meeting

Notices
41

On Saturday, 6th, 17 Portuguese amateur radio clubs - including IARU and EURAO representatives - came together in the city of Santarém to devise a common course of action in response to the recent proposal to reallocate the amateur 2 meter band to the Aeronautical service that, if not opposed soon, will be on the table at the WRC2023.

The meeting took place at the headquarters of ARR, the local amateur radio club, who provided the space for the meeting and, for those who couldn’t be present, teleconference equipment.

At the end of the conference, the group agreed on a common strategy to follow and elected a representative body of five elements that will hand deliver a written statement, signed by all club representatives, next Monday, the 15th, to ANACOM, Portugal´s telecommunications regulatory body.

Earlier in the week, the regulator responded to several radio clubs and individual amateur radio operators that had sent letters urging the opposition to the French proposal to reallocate the 2 meter band to the aeronautical service know as PTA(19)090R1.

ANACOM´s amateur radio head officer wrote back, saying that it “made a note” of the objections and that was inviting “external entities” to attend a preparatory meeting of the team representing Portugal in WRC2023, that will take place next Monday, the 15th, at ANACOM´s headquarters, in downtown Lisbon.

On a public note distributed on Sunday afternoon, the attending clubs made their intentions public, noting that all “vehemently repudiate” the French proposal and urged the Portuguese government to oppose PTA(19)090R1 “on all instances, both at CEPT and ITU”.

Yesterday, the 9th, the representative body announced that three more clubs officially joined the petition, make 20 the number of amateur radio clubs that are signing the document.

42

There is no proposal to reallocate the 2m band. Even if the proposal goes through It will remain an amateur band. The proposal doesn’t even say that it will no longer be a primary allocation to the amateur service. It simply lists 144-146MHz along with other frequencies that could be added to the aeronautical mobile service for telemetry. It notes that any allocation should not impact existing band users.

This is not to say that this proposal should be allowed to happen, but it is best left to the RSGB etc rather than a lot of ill-informed petitions. We should stay calm!

1 Like
43

Actually, if we went from a primary allocation to a secondary one, it’s a reallocation. :wink:
But we have an exclusive allocation, which is a litle bit diferent…

Been the secondary allocation means no protection from interference.

They need a frequency and we are thrown away from it.
Small signal ? Meteor scatter ? EME ? IARU band plan ?
Forget all that after 2024/2025 if the French proposal will succeed!

So, fingers crossed that the PTA(19)090R1 proposal will not pass the CPG/ECC meeting, that will be held in Ankara, Turquey, August 26-30 2019…

73 de Pedro, CT1DBS/CU3HF

44

There is no proposal to change the amateur allocation to secondary. We could be shared primary users or aeronautical mobile could be secondary.

45

I agree.
All different National RSGB, DARC, URE, ARI, REF, etc are no doubt working on it and preparing solid arguments to make this proposal rejected.
73,

Guru

46

No Richard.
The exact proposition is to have the aeronautical service as a primary allocation.
So, one could only guess what will be the secondary allocation as usualy it dosen’t exist 2 primary allocations in the same part of the spectrum…

From French proposal PTA(19)090R1, issued 14 June 2019

From the Summary of the proposal

“…of possible new allocations to the aeronautical mobile service on a primary basis is revised by adding the band 144-146 MHz…”

From the background of the proposal
“At the same time, the number of manned and unmanned aircraft equipped with sensors has grown significantly in the past 20 years together with the need of bidirectional low to high data rate communications.
…
Consequently the need of non-safety data communications between various types of aeronautical platforms increases and so the need for new frequency bands.” [the bold is mine]

Vy 73 de Pedro, CT1DBS/CU3HF

1 Like
47

From the July 29th URE (Unión Radioaficionados Españoles) managing board meeting minutes:

la delegación española se opondrá a esta propuesta en la próxima CPG de la CEPT a celebrar este mes de agosto y por tanto la exclusión de este asunto de la agenda para la CMR-23 en sintonía con la propuesta unánime de la IARU y de toda la comunidad de radioaficionados.

I can more or less translate this into English as follows:
“the Spanish delegation will reject this proposal in the next CPG of the CEPT to be held this month of August and therefore the exclusion of this matter from the agenda for the CMR-23 according to the IARU and the whole ham radio comunity unanimous proposal.”

Note: I can’t help with the accronisms (CPG, CMR-23) which I dislike so much and are , unfortunately, becoming more and more common in our daily communications.

73,

Guru

48

What happened to the French national ham radio organization? Was there any effort on their part to prevent this? Does the French national ham radio organization lobby the French government? Was this an ongoing worry talked about in the French ham radio magazines?

49

All good questions. I cannot answer them, but I think a clue lies in French activity on 2 metres. If we take the number of people participating in SOTA in 2019 as a reasonable indicator for overall activity on the band the results are interesting:

Country…No of activators…No of chasers
All G--------------180-------------------254
All DL--------------62--------------------55
All EA--------------37--------------------53
HB9----------------55--------------------69
I---------------------31--------------------21

F--------------------13---------------------8
FL--------------------0---------------------0

These figures do not include CEPT operation, just activity by hams holding callsigns for the indicated country.

As a long time operator on V/UHF going back to 1964, I remember the days when a lift in conditions brought in many French stations but if SOTA is any good as an indicator it would appear that French activity is pretty poor nowadays. French authorities monitoring the band may well have concluded that it is ripe for re-allocation. As they say, use it or lose it!

50

My understanding is that the following sentence implies that the French national ham radio organization (REF) as a IARU member and part of the ham radio comunity, since the URE meeting minutes speak about unanimity on the proposal, they (the REF) also reject that idea and support the exclusion of the matter from the agenda for the CMR-23 meeting.

However, it would be welcome if some of our SOTA French colleagues could have access to the official position of the REF about this matter and they would share it with us here.

73,

Guru

51

It isn’t.

52

Because?

53

Because it isn’t.

Never let the sample select itself in any kind of statistical analysis.

All those figures show is that SOTA is less popular in France than other countries.

Drawing any conclusion that SOTA activity is a good tell tale of overall French activity is extremely unwise.

54

Instead of motivating hams to use terrestrial repeaters SOTA de facto restricts 2 m ham traffic to 145.500 and 144.300 MHz! The “Holy Rules” - I know! :frowning:

73, Alfred, OE5AKM

55

Perhaps, though I only see it as an indicator, it needs to be taken in conjunction with other data. For instance, as of April this year there were 13,324 French radio amateurs, approximately a sixth of the number of UK hams, though the populations are similar. This is also an indicator that 2m activity will be lower than in the UK but is not conclusive.

56

Not so, Alfred, it is good manners to move off the calling frequencies.

57

A sixth the number of UK licences issued.

The number of licences issued is not the same as the number of amateurs.

Licenses issued is a relatively meaningless figure especially the UK case where many recent (last 10-15years) amateurs will hold 3 licences as a result of the current licensing scheme. So you cannot compare number of licences between the countries when the conditions for issue and holding are not the same.

58

+/- 50 kHz off are more than enough for this purpose. This does not protect the rest of the band!

73, Alfred, OE5AKM

59

Approximately means just what it says. You are very fussy this evening, Andy! I see no problem with comparing the number of licenses issued in two countries. The number of active amateurs will be less, of course, but they’re still potentially active. I’m not trying to compare to the tenth decimal place, just trying to get within the ball park. If you have a better way of doing it let me see your figures and it will be my turn to be picky!:grinning:

60

That statement confirms you haven’t got a clue about what you are doing. The number of licences in the UK is artificially high due to how licences are issued and if you don’t take that into account, then your figures are meaningless.

You compound the nonsensical figures by declaring the (non-comparable) licence figures differ by a factor 6 for populations the same size, then fail to scale the figures derived from the SOTA DB by this factor. If there are 6 times as many licencees issued in the UK and (your premise here, participation within an arbitary award scheme is indicative of overall activity) then as there are more licences in the UK there will be more QSOs in the DB for the UK. You need to normalise the figures by the licence scaling factor.

But don’t because your conclusion that SOTA activity is a good barometer of overall activity is just nonsense.