The ARRL has again urged the FCC to go forward with a proposed new Amateur Radio allocation at 472-479 kHz (630 meters) and to establish service rules for Amateur Radio operation at 135.7-137.8 kHz (2200 meters). The League reiterated its August 31 arguments in favor of flexible FCC Part 97 regulations it its September 30 reply comments to the FCC’s April Report and Order, Order, and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (R&O/NPRM) in ET Docket 15-99. ThatR&O/NPRM raised several questions regarding how Amateur Radio might coexist with PLC systems used to control the power grid. Targeting comments filed by theUtilities Telecom Council (UTC), the ARRL called on the Commission to ignore UTC’s call not to allocate 630 meters to Amateur Radio. It asked the FCC to implement a notification procedure for amateur stations within 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) of a transmission line carrying PLC and where the PLC system is operating on frequencies within or which overlap the 2200 or 630 meter bands.
“The comments of UTC, without the benefit of any technical component or argument, oppose the allocation of the 630 meter band to the Amateur Service, and suggest overly and unnecessarily conservative regulation of Amateur operation in the 2200 meter band,” the ARRL told the FCC. “Whatever protection criteria are ultimately deemed to be necessary with respect to the 2200 meter band, those criteria would be applicable and sufficient as well with respect to the 630-meter band,” the ARRL said. “There is no technical justification offered by UTC for withholding the 630 meter allocation.”
The ARRL also urged the FCC to reject what it called “UTC’s inchoate proposal” to elevate the unlicensed status of PLCs operating between 9 and 490 kHz, purportedly to protect them from interference “caused by amateur operations,” while not making any accommodations to address PLC interference to Amateur Radio operations. “UTC cannot have it both ways: It cannot enjoy the benefits of unlicensed operation under Part 15 of the Commission’s rules as a carrier-current, unintentional emitter and at the same time claim the protection afforded an allocated, licensed radio service,” the ARRL argued.
While the UTC has offered to work with the FCC, the ARRL characterized the UTC’s comments as “distinctly unhelpful” in terms of providing information regarding the prevalence and location of PLCs that need protection, the interference potential from Amateur Radio operation and notification requirements, and just how much protection the PLCs actually need. “They are not responsive at all to the plethora of questions asked by the Commission in the Notice,” the ARRL continued, “and those points that UTC makes are unsubstantiated.”
The ARRL said that PLCs are not nearly as prevalent in the 630 band as the UTC has suggested, and that, in any case, such systems already operate as unlicensed Part 15 services that must not cause interference to licensed services and must accept interference from them. The League has indicated that any rules applicable to 2200 meters should also suffice for 630 meters. Nonetheless, the League said, it’s willing to work with utilities in setting up a notification procedure to address the unlikely possibility that Amateur Radio operations in the two bands might interfere with critical PLC systems.
“In order to implement this, UTC should be called upon to provide to ARRL or to the general public a list of transmission lines carrying PLC which make use of either of the two subject bands, thus to facilitate notification,” the ARRL reply comments said. “This would have the double benefit of encouraging a complete PLC database while permitting accurate determinations of which transmission lines are carrying PLC which have any potential at all of adverse interaction with amateur stations.” Once notification is made, though, the burden should shift to the utility to establish that there would be harmful interference, the ARRL said.
“The likelihood of an amateur station conducting operations in the 2200 or 630 meter bands from a fixed station located less than 1 kilometer from a PLC-carrying transmission line upstream from a distribution substation is exceptionally low,” the ARRL asserted. “Many transmission power lines do not carry PLC at all. Most PLC systems do not use the very small amateur allocations at 2200 or 630 meters.”
The League concluded by calling on the FCC to allocate 630 meters to Amateur Radio, as proposed in the Notice, reject UTC’s proposal to elevate the status of PLCs, and implement a notification procedure for amateur stations within 1 kilometer of a transmission line carrying PLC in or near the two bands, and tomake the LF and MF allocation changes in Part 2 and the Part 97 service rule changes, “as proposed by ARRL and not otherwise.”
Source: ARRL
K6UDA Radio, The elmer show with attitude. This time I’m building a portable end fed wire antenna that deploys in minutes and is pretty cheap to... Read more
Amateur Radio volunteers are urgently needed to assist with communications during the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Walkon Saturday, May... Read more
Let me show you how to write a DMR codeplug from scratch and how to import contacts into the software with the N0GSG Contact Manager Read more
IC-9700 manual “The Icom IC-9700 manual is now available in Japanese on the Icom website. Here is a link to a “rough” English... Read more
The coronal hole high speed stream continues to cause geomagnetic responses to G1 (Minor) storming levels. Solar wind speeds over the past 24 hours ha... Read more
Description Liquid Rubber Feed Point Sealant 30ml bottle with brush-in-lid Applicator We have formulated an excellent UV resistant rubber sealant to e... Read more
VA3NCD had the luxury of being able to install 2 50MHz 7el Yagis for testing one against the other. One an M2 7el JHV, the other... Read more
Orlando HamCation® will host the 2016 ARRL National Convention in February. The convention will mark the 70th anniversary of HamCation — second only i... Read more
The Palstar TR30A is a new 100 watt transceiver optimized for Ham Band only reception using the best of legacy techniques combined with micropr... Read more
Hamvention Live by W5KUB.com “We start the broadcast today, Weds May 18th about 8:30 AMCT for a 10 hour drive. (1430 UTC Wed) . We will be live... Read more
Retevis RT83 with digital and analogue mode two way radio. Using TDMA technology, designed with Tier II,AMBE++ vocoder, compatible with mototrb... Read more
This year’s Dayton Hamvention®, host of the 2019 ARRL National Convention, will be the first year a mobile event app will help attendees navigate the... Read more
by N8HM 10. Rub shoulders with 25,000 of your best friends at the largest hamfest in the United States, including all of the AMSAT Directors and senio... Read more
1. Objective: Amateurs worldwide contact and exchange QSO information with other amateurs using digital modes (Baudot RTTY, ASCII, AMTOR, PSK31, PSK63... Read more
The 2019 GNU Radio Conference (GRCon19), September 16 – 20 in Huntsville, Alabama, is seeking papers and presentations for the event. Submissions are... Read more
Recent Posts
Portable Antenna Build by K6UDA
Amateur Radio Volunteers Urgently Needed to Support Communication for NYC NAMI 5K Walk on May 13
How to Write a DMR Codeplug / N0GSG -Ham Radio 2.0: Episode 58
![The Icom IC-9700 manual is now available [ ENGLISH ]](https://qrznow.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/ic9700_manual-265x168.jpg)
The Icom IC-9700 manual is now available [ ENGLISH ]
DAY THREE OF G1-G2 (MINOR-MODERATE) GEOMAGNETIC STORMS
Feed Point Sealant
7el LFA2 Noise comparison on 50 MHz
Orlando HamCation to Host 2016 ARRL National Convention
Palstar TR30A – HF Transceiver
Hamvention Live Stream by W5KUB and Icom
Retevis RT83(GPS) 10W IP67 DMR Digital UHF Radio
ARRL Hamvention 2019 – APP
Top 10 Reasons to Come to Dayton Hamvention
2017 RTTY Roundup
GNU Radio Conference 2019 Seeks Papers, Presentations
Warning: file_get_contents(https://plusone.google.com/_/+1/fastbutton?url=https%3A%2F%2Fqrznow.com%2Farrl-reiterates-call-for-fcc-to-allocate-630-meters-okay-rules-for-2200-meters%2F): failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found in /home/qrznow/public_html/wp-content/themes/goodnews5/framework/functions/posts_share.php on line 151
