Revised requirements for the Amateur and Amateur Satellite Services are now available on the IARU website at

http://www.iaru.org/ac-09spec.pdf

Of interest to the Amateur Satellite community are:

3.10 50–54 MHz The Amateur Service requires retention of the exclusive 50-MHz allocation where it now exists, and provision of an allocation of at least 2 MHz in other geographic areas, with at least 500 kHz on an exclusive basis. A harmonised allocation for the Amateur Satellite Service is also sought, to bridge the gap between 28 MHz and 144 MHz.

3.12 420-450 MHz The Amateur Service requires retention of the existing allocations in the 420-450 MHz band and opposes new uses by other services or low-power devices except where sharing or compatibility studies have been satisfactorily concluded.

The Amateur-Satellite Service relies heavily on the sub-band 435-438 MHz, which presently is the only space-to-Earth amateur allocation between 146 MHz and 2.4 GHz. Because of the crowding of the existing band 435-438 MHz with unmanned amateur satellites and manned space stations, it is desirable to study expansion of the band.

Sharing in this band with the Radiolocation Service has been successful over many decades because of geographic separation and other factors. Recently, in the United States there has been interference from amateur stations to radiolocation stations, which has been resolved on a case-by-case basis by mitigation techniques or by taking amateur repeaters off the air.

A growing concern to the Amateur Service is the proliferation of low power devices in the ISM band 433.05-434.79 MHz (centre frequency 433.92 MHz) permitted in some European countries under RR No. 5.280.

3.13 1240-1300 MHz The Amateur Service seeks retention of the band 1240-1300 MHz. The Amateur-Satellite Service seeks retention of the band 1260-1270 MHz and deletion of the "Earth-to-space only" restriction.

WRC-2000 allocated the band 1240-1300 MHz to the radiodetermination-satellite service for space-to-space use. In addition, WRC-2000 allocated the band 1260-1300 MHz to the radiodetermination-satellite service for space-to-Earth use such as for the European Galileo positioning system. These actions do not change the Amateur and Amateur-Satellite Service allocations but present new sharing situations and potential operating restrictions.

It is particularly good to see the inclusive of an Amateur Satellite Service allocation at 50 MHz.

Hopeful satellite users and AMSAT organisations will continuing working through their National Societies

I sure we could all think of some other "it would be nice to have" allocations for the Amateur Satellite Service such as 1240-1250 and 2390-2400 but achieving the above is a good first step.

73 Trevor M5AKA Daily Amateur Radio Email/RSS News: http://www.southgatearc.org/ Email Your News To: editor at southgatearc.org Or Upload Using Form At: http://www.southgatearc.org/news/your_news_1.htm ----