Band Plan

[kd5icr]

I am about to take a chance and go take the test for General I will take the general written then after a few months I will take the 5wpm code test. So this is what I was thinking.
I notice that SSTV is in the voice area of some of the bands how about moving it to the bottom of the CW area? I dont think is would matter much and that would open up a little more room for phone. I mean I dont hear a lot of sstv so why not?.It seems to me that because it is not phone and it is closer to digital mode would it hurt to move it around?.
And what other modes would others like to move to other areas?
I am not saying get rid of ANY MODE, just move them around.
Lets hear it. All ideas welcome



73
kd5icr (aka) Bill

[KA8NCR]

The biggest reason that SSTV operators work in the phone band is because they use SSB to talk about the pictures they are sending, notify the receiving station(s) what SSTV modulation scheme they are using (there was a time, before soundcards, that if you didn't know, you had to guess and you'd miss half the picture) and generally talk a whole lot more about the picture they are sending.

If you moved them to the CW band, you'd be creating a whole new problem of US-based phone operators in the CW band.

SSTV has always been sort of an elite mode. Years ago, again before PC soundcards, it took a considerable amount of effort, expense and whereabouts to work SSTV. There were few operators, and everyone knew they used one or two frequencies and were not prolific like RTTY. Now, that may have changed because the barrier to entry is quite low and there may be more SSTV operators. But they still need to switch to SSB to communicate between pics.

[wg7x]

Bill,

You're going to get a lot of flack on this idea.

First off, the bottom of the CW bands are where most of the high speed CW operators hang out. That is also prime CW DX territory. Not a good idea to plunk a 3 kHz wide mode down there!

SSTV operators also use voice to coordinate their activities. Again, not a good idea in the narrow-band area. Even though SSTV sounds like a digital mode, for the most part it is not. It uses audio frequency tones through a SSB transmitter to transfer the image. You can put a couple of RTTY signals, and quite a few CW signals in the space required for one SSTV signal.

Most of the CW/Digital territory below the phone bands is already spoken for and is actively used by RTTY, PSK31, PACKET, and of course CW. New digital modes appear almost daily and require a new slice of already scarce spectrum.

So, you see, not a good idea.

The idea of re-aligning our phone and DATA/CW bands is a good one, but what we need here is to align our bands to match the rest of the world. That is one of the items on the agenda for the next WARC.

The Forty meter band is going to be very nice when regions one and three get the same allocations as we here in region two enjoy. By the same token, it would be nice if we could use 14.100-150 mHz for phone, or maybe 3725-3775 kHz for phone like our Canadian brethren do.

The trouble here is that if one mode is moved from one place to another, another mode/group always suffers, and complaints begin. Lets give lots of thought to this before we begin stirring the pot!

73 Gary WG7X

[n1zzz]

What we really need to do is re-align the bandplans around bandwidth. This is not my idea, but one that deserves serious consideration.

Basically CW, PSK31 and other narrow band modes on the bottom, giving way to medium bandwidth modes such as RTTY, PACTOR, etc; and then have the large bandwidth modes at the top; voice, SSTV, digital voice.

Who knows if that will ever happen however.

73

Jeremy N1ZZZ

[KA8NCR]

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (n1zzz @ June 17 2003,15:05)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">What we really need to do is re-align the bandplans around bandwidth. #This is not my idea, but one that deserves serious consideration.

Basically CW, PSK31 and other narrow band modes on the bottom, giving way to medium bandwidth modes such as RTTY, PACTOR, etc; and then have the large bandwidth modes at the top; voice, SSTV, digital voice.

Who knows if that will ever happen however.

73

Jeremy N1ZZZ[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Why? Isn't that what we have now?

Let's look at 20 meters. 14.0-14.050 is CW. RTTY, PSK falls into 14.070-14.100. SSB, SSTV is from 14.150-14.350.