Today the FCC finally posted the notification for Part 97 mods, allowing general amateur operation on the 137 and 472 kHz bands. Legal operation is expected to commence on Oct. 16, 2017. However, if operation is planned, one must 'register' with the UTC via their website, here: https://utc.org/plc-database-amateur-notification-process/ If they don't tell you formally that you CAN'T operate within 30 days, you are good to transmit. What a saga. John WA3ETD / WG2XKA (Part 5)
Thanks for including the link for UTC submission. Is there a data base showing their PLC installations on a map? I have concerns that there is bound to be confusion where UTC may automatically reject but not state the location of the alleged PLC devise.
Submitted my UTC notification as I'm interested in 630m. My QTH is very rural / remote. Normal noise floor for 160m out here is usually S1-S2, lower in the winter. It's one of the reasons I moved to the sticks. My electric co-op uses PLC technology for communication with the smart (dumb) meters on the side of my house & barn. Let me enlighten anyone who hasn't experienced the pleasure of this low band form of PLC technology - when it "activates" for communication with the electric meters, anything below 6 MHz is instantly trashed with this horrendous pulsed digital RFI. AM BCB and 160m are completely wiped out. 20 over 9 of pure hash. From what I've observed, the multiple orders of harmonics generated by this technology don't seem to drop off until around 6 MHz. It's an incredibly dirty communication. The good part is they only activate it for about 15 minutes a day, usually in the mid-afternoon. I'm normally at work or outside doing stuff at that time, so it's not a major issue. Once their communication shuts down, it's back to low band silence. I should also mention, the "smart" meters they use appear to generate a continuous low-band digital noise for a radius of about 10-feet around the meter. I've had to make adjustments inside the shack because my operating area is within that field. Still investigating some method of shielding the meter can and main house breaker panel. (The outside meter is directly behind the panel inside the house). I've been told some utilities will allow you to switch back to an analog meter, but for an added "fee" and you have to read it yourself and submit the readings. Haven't contacted mine to find out if they'll allow me to do something like that.
You should submit a QRM complaint to FCC. As part of the resolution process, you might end up with a QRM-free meter, but for free.
The UTC website is down and boasting: " Error establishing a database connection" If they don't bring it up today I will snail mail an application. It seems to me that having an application form site go down is one way to stifle applications.... I am suspicious.
Submitted. Website up. Use google maps to get lat and long...be sure to convert decimal degrees to minutes and seconds.
Which I remembered to do but entered it with spaces instead of /slashes. Maybe I'll resubmit just in case they can't figure it out!
Or you could just wait to see if they figure it out. I submitted the DMS coordinates the way they came from Google, and the website happily accepted them. If they really cared about formatting, I suspect they would have had you submit decimal degrees instead of DMS, because decimal degrees are easier for a machine to parse.
I bet you could put ANYthing in those boxes and the site would accept it. I don't think there's any required formatting.
Their site does seem to be rather flexible on the format of the coordinates required. And again, if they wanted something the machine could parse easily, they would have used decimal degrees instead of the old DMS system. Given the large diversity in the kinds and sizes of the powerline operators involved, I suspect every request that is submitted will (at least initially) be hand-vetted by the providers in the area. So the format probably doesn't matter since a human is most likely going to be reviewing your notification in an email generated by that form or something similar.
I'm betting you're right about the human interface. Probably some intern will get tasked with matching the coordinates with lines on a hard copy map.
