Hello,
I apologise for the intrusion of my first message on this list - consider me an incidental lurker, incidental AMSAT-UK colloquium visitor, and incidental easysat user. I just don't have the cycles to do more, sorry.
I ask your assistance in the following matter.
Background In the Netherlands, 436-440 MHz is secondary to the amateur and amateur sat service. The folk experimenting with D-star on 70cms use a fairly large shift of 9.4 Mhz, resulting in a typical setup of 430.400-430.600 in and 439.800-440.000 out. Unattended stations (like D-star repeaters) do require a special license here.
Recently, issuing of unattended licenses has come to an extreme halt because the Dutch regulator has started to allocate frequencies around 439.500 and upwards for Differential GPS (DGPS).
The Dutch amateur community contests the use of this frequency for DGPS, claiming it is in violation with ITU allocations. Amateur clubs in neighbour countries, *as well as telcom regulators in those countries*, agree on this matter and believe AT-EZ is mistaken. But AT-EZ are also stubbern, and supposedly fear damage claims from systems already deployed.
The net result is that currently, no D-star repeater license is issued because the output frequency proposed cannot be licensed for unattended use, according to the regulator.
Recently.. The D-star community, having fear of not being able to use their equipment, is now proposing to use a shift of 7.4 MHz shift: input ~430.400-430.600, output 437.800-438.000. The output obviously collides with the amateur radio satellite service, but the proposal does not mention this at all, nor does it mention any remedy for this interference, which the amateur radio service would inflict on itself, on a worldwide (at least European) scale.
I don't need to explain what a 'local hole in allocation' does for the worldwide sat service, no?
Not to mention, if the Amateur Radio Service doesn't take it's own protection seriously, why would regulators need to take these interference concerns seriously?
I believe this plan is very poorly thought-out and should be rejected and complained upon on an International scale.
I believe that the amsat community should respond on this matter. I also believe that our IARU-contacts should be used to fix this proposal.
Data So far, the only information I found on this, is in Dutch, so you may need to babelfish things: http://www.d-star.nl/ http://zendamateur.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=3913&p=29449
There are 2 amateur radio clubs in the Netherlands. One is VERON (IARU representative), the other one is VRZA. While VRZA is not an IARU representative, both VERON and VRZA have bi-annual meetings with the Dutch regulator (which, I must admit, have been in better spirit in the past than they are now, because of the DGPS issue, but I digress)
The plan, as described on the URL above, claims that the VRZA "thinks this proposal is a good idea".
I kindly ask AMSAT folk, and especially those with IARU contacts, to express their concerns about this proposal.
The person championing the proposal is PA0HWB, pa0hwb@amsat.org (I realize the irony of Hans using the AMSAT alias to damage the amateur sat service..)
For VRZA, I believe the best contact is the chair PG9W, pg9w (at vrza.nl). For VERON, I think PB0AOK (at veron.nl) is probably a good place to send mail to. You probably have better contacts than I have - please use them.
I apologise for this lengthy message but hope this crazy proposal can be dealt with appropiately.
Thanks in advance, 73
Geert Jan PE1HZG