Will narrowbanding effect ham radio?

[zz0468]

My point is that what you HAMS do affects other people. Not just your merry little band.

Yes, this is very correct. No argument there. It's also true that what happens on the commercial and government bands doesn't have to automatically happen on the ham bands. They're separate services, with separate requirements. And contrary to what you may feel, hams have a long history of excellent cooperation with other services, especially federal. Many bands are shared on a secondary basis with the feds, and it's an arrangement that works for them as well as hams.

I happen to think narrow banding is a good idea.

It is a good idea, when and where it's needed, and when it's characteristics will solve more problems then it creates.

You obviously are a HAM who has a sore spot about those who believe that the rules regarding radio systems should apply to all, not just a select few.

Here's where you're quite wrong. All I'm trying to convey is, the narrow banding rules do not apply to amateur radio, and there is currently no good reason for them to. I don't expect Part 90 users to comply with broadcast rules anymore than I expect hams to comply with Part 90 rules. They're all separate services, with separate technical standards.

I happen to think narrow banding will require people to be a little more responsible with their equipment and being responsible is sound practice.

I'm at a loss at how you expect to accomplish that with just narrow banding. That makes absolutely no sense.

When you have to deal with the effects of intermod and interference and what those impacts are, you tend to try to not ding your neighbor. As far as HAM bashing goes, the only thing I have "bashed" on is irresponsibility and ignorance by SOME operators where equipment is concerned.

Intermod won't go away with narrow banding. The only thing narrow banding will do is reduce the occupied bandwidth of transmitters so they can make room for yet more transmitters.

It's painfully obvious that it exists just by seeing some of the posts and replies on this forum.

I don't disagree with you there.

I won't lump you in with the "435'ers" cause that would be just plain wrong. I also happen to think that licensing of HAMs is very weak at best and there should be more knowledge required of operators.

This is an argument as old as ham radio itself. The entry level license has always been easy to get. The top grade license has always been about as much work as an equivalent commercial license. Narrow banding won't help with this issue.

I think the "self regulation" of which you have spoken about earlier is purely non-existent and the fact that the FCC lets the "435'ers" get away with their shenanigans is proof that you folks don't get shafted one stinking bit.

You're clearly too far removed from the hobby to understand how self regulation works. You don't participate in frequency coordination and advisory groups. You don't participate in observer programs that are closely affiliated with the FCC. You don't participate in rule making petitions and discussion panels with FCC staff who attend the many ham conventions around the country. In short, you are ill informed as to how the self policing works.

The .435 thing is mostly left to it's own, mainly because it keeps that sort of thing in one place. It's not encouraged, and it's not ignored. It skates on the ragged edge of legality, and when it slips over the line, it's dealt with.

Oh... and narrow banding won't make THAT go away, either.

I'd say you folks have it pretty darn good. So with that I would say that IF you do get stuck with narrow banding I would be counting my lucky stars and be mighty happy that's all you get stuck with.

We're not likely to get "stuck" with it at all. What will happen is, when and where it makes sense, it will be a voluntary action, not a mandatory one.

Quick geography lesson before I go. If you look closely you will notice that place is in SOUTHERN Nevada not northern Nevada.

Operations from southern Nevada frequently extend well into Utah and Idaho, and there's infrastructure out there to support it.

Bottom line here, there is a place and a purpose for narrow banding. At this point in time, there is no compelling reason to mandate it on the ham bands just because commercial and government users are forced to. There are many non-amateur services that are currently immune to the narrow banding mandate. It's only being applied where there is a perceived need. And that need is for additional channel slots, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[IDCowboy1]

"It's also true that what happens on the commercial and government bands doesn't have to automatically happen on the ham bands. They're separate services, with separate requirements. And contrary to what you may feel, hams have a long history of excellent cooperation with other services, especially federal. Many bands are shared on a secondary basis with the feds, and it's an arrangement that works for them as well as hams."
"Intermod won't go away with narrow banding. The only thing narrow banding will do is reduce the occupied bandwidth of transmitters so they can make room for yet more transmitters."

Let's explore this a bit. The HAMs share a band with commercial industry. Commerical/Government industry on that band is required to be in narrowband. Wouldn't it be just a weeeeeeeee bit smart with all your desires for interoperability and cooperation with FEMA during national emergencies to be on the same standard platform as everybody else? Call me crazy but standardization would certainly be a good thing in a national emergency. Not to mention it sure keeps the griping down when HAM guy A is transmitting at 25KHz and it's buzzing onto FEMA worker B's 12.5 KHz across the way cause the channels are so close. Narrow banding isn't just dropping to 12.5KHz. It also requires the filter systems on the transmitter to cram that signal down into a 12.5 KHz bandwidth so it doesn't spray all over. I would say that would be a good thing to cut down on intermod and such. At least it sure seems to keep our neighbors at a joint use site happy. There's where responsibility comes in. If you are running in narrow band and your neighbors are too and things are a bit cramped it makes you work a little bit harder to keep your equipment in check so you don't splatter on to their stuff. I'd say that's a pretty good thing too. Good maintenance makes good neighbors and happy equipment. Now as the last item concerning not making the kids go away that can't act right, well we all know narrow band equipment isn't cheap and it's not always easy to maintain. Well some yahoo with an entry level license with little or no knowledge of electronics isn't going to be able to afford to buy much less maintain narrow band equipment. That right there will keep the riff raff out of the picture and I'm sure that would make a lot of more traditional and equipment savvy HAMs very happy. Positive face of HAM radio, hearts and minds and all that rot. Hmmmmmmm doesn't look so bad now does it. For not knowing jack diddly about HAM radio I think I've helped you folks out quite a bit today. My work is done here.

 

[W2NJS]

Let's cut out the theorizing and get down to facts. The fact is that if a FEMA radio is operating on UHF it's likely to be in the 400-420 mHz range. If a ham repeater is operating in the same area at the same time it'll be somewhere between 440 and 449.9875 mHz. Now, please tell what the real chances are that these two operations are going to interfere with each other. The government operates at the bottom of the band, and the hams operate at the top, and it's been that way for years, so please skip the "typical" examples of possible problems because the ones you're making show that you don't know very much at all about the practical realities of the subject.

 

[IDCowboy1]

Let's cut out the theorizing and get down to facts. The fact is that if a FEMA radio is operating on UHF it's likely to be in the 400-420 mHz range. If a ham repeater is operating in the same area at the same time it'll be somewhere between 440 and 449.9875 mHz. Now, please tell what the real chances are that these two operations are going to interfere with each other. The government operates at the bottom of the band, and the hams operate at the top, and it's been that way for years, so please skip the "typical" examples of possible problems because the ones you're making show that you don't know very much at all about the practical realities of the subject.

I was referring to the 2m VHF side, but since you want to go into the UHF side and OBVIOUSLY you do not know about what frequencies and systems the government is on and how they use them. There are plenty of public safety agencies that use 450 to 465 MHz analog radios. They are not necessarily in large metro areas but rural ones and gosh where are all the gaps going to be in point to point emergency communications. RURAL AREAS. Hmmmmmmmm know not about practical realities do I? Yup again my work is done.

 

[zz0468]

Let's explore this a bit. The HAMs share a band with commercial industry.

What band are you referring to?

144-148 MHz is not shared with anybody.

420-450 is shared with federal radiolocation and other federal services. FM is incompatible with pulsed radar, by most definitions.

What limited non-amateur FM activity on 420-450 is not authorized to communicate with amateur stations.

Amateur is secondary in 420-450, so active steps are taken in advance to avoid interference. And this includes the amateur television, ssb/cw and wide band data transmission that occurs on that band. It's not all just FM, you know.

Commerical/Government industry on that band is required to be in narrowband. Wouldn't it be just a weeeeeeeee bit smart with all your desires for interoperability and cooperation with FEMA during national emergencies to be on the same standard platform as everybody else?

Interoperability is more than operation on a common mode. Forcing narrow band operation in the ham bands would neither help, nor hurt any interoperability that takes place. Besides... the amateur systems are separate from the commercial/governement systems, and they DO NOT talk to each other.

Call me crazy...

That's not the word I had in mind, but it will do for now.

... but standardization would certainly be a good thing in a national emergency.

Possibly helpful, but not mandatory. What's important is the hams all talk to each other and the FEMA people all talk to each other. Any on-the-air interface between the two takes place on one system or the other, not between the two.

Not to mention it sure keeps the griping down when HAM guy A is transmitting at 25KHz and it's buzzing onto FEMA worker B's 12.5 KHz across the way cause the channels are so close.

Huh? You talk as if FEMA channels are intertwined between ham channels. That's not the case.

Narrow banding isn't just dropping to 12.5KHz. It also requires the filter systems on the transmitter to cram that signal down into a 12.5 KHz bandwidth so it doesn't spray all over.I would say that would be a good thing to cut down on intermod and such.

You seem to have some misconceptions as to how intermod works. An on-channel mix product won't care what the bandwidth of either the transmitter or the receiver is. Some mix products have a harmonic component to them, so it's deviation is multiplied as well as it's frequency, so even if everyone is narrow banded, it's quite feasible for a wide band mix product to hit a receiver.

(blah blah blah, yackity schmackity)

Not worth repeating or responding to.

My work is done here.

Oh, good!

 

[IDCowboy1]

What band are you referring to?

144-148 MHz is not shared with anybody.

420-450 is shared with federal radiolocation and other federal services. FM is incompatible with pulsed radar, by most definitions.

What limited non-amateur FM activity on 420-450 is not authorized to communicate with amateur stations.

Amateur is secondary in 420-450, so active steps are taken in advance to avoid interference. And this includes the amateur television, ssb/cw and wide band data transmission that occurs on that band. It's not all just FM, you know.



Interoperability is more than operation on a common mode. Forcing narrow band operation in the ham bands would neither help, nor hurt any interoperability that takes place. Besides... the amateur systems are separate from the commercial/governement systems, and they DO NOT talk to each other.



That's not the word I had in mind, but it will do for now.



Possibly helpful, but not mandatory. What's important is the hams all talk to each other and the FEMA people all talk to each other. Any on-the-air interface between the two takes place on one system or the other, not between the two.



Huh? You talk as if FEMA channels are intertwined between ham channels. That's not the case.



You seem to have some misconceptions as to how intermod works. An on-channel mix product won't care what the bandwidth of either the transmitter or the receiver is. Some mix products have a harmonic component to them, so it's deviation is multiplied as well as it's frequency, so even if everyone is narrow banded, it's quite feasible for a wide band mix product to hit a receiver.



Not worth repeating or responding to.



Oh, good!

Well, I was trying to keep things professional, but since you want to start inferring insults and other things then fine. I won't stoop to your level but I will say this. You really are doing nothing to prove the fact that new school HAMs are nothing more than egotists with Napoleon complexes. Someone offers up a dissenting opinion and challenges your little world you blow up and proceed to turn something as simple as an "I don't agree with narrowbanding on HAM radio" into a two day rant. I have no problem with disagreements, but when people start in I will respond in kind. I didn't necessarily mean FEMA. I meant public safety and federal disaster response as a whole. I'm still confused where you came up with pulsed radar, but okayyyyyy. There's a lot more to the spectrum map than what is listed on there. Contrary to what you believe you indeed share the 144-148 MHz area with MilAir. NORAD has SEVERAL unclassified frequencies there not to mention quite a few A/A and A/G frequencies used by installations all over the US. Referring back to the incident I mentioned about a certain FD being shut down due to their alarm system interfereing with an ATC freq. Well it just so happens that freq. was 146.25 MHz. The shutdown occurred in Jun of 2009 and as of today that freq. is still in use. So, with that I will no longer continue this insanity because it's VERY obvious to me that for an engineer(yup I did some digging too) you don't know crap from shinola. We have a saying in MX for engineers but I don't think it would be appropriate here on this forum.

 

[James_Bond_007]

it's those attitudes against innovation and tinkering that the newbie no code hams seem to have is why i no longer talk on the ham bands.

i like to tinker and every time i try to get into the technical aspect of the hobby i usually get ignored off the repeater.

they just don't seem interested in the tech or innovation aspect (which is what originally drew me to ham) of the hobby anymore.

this is why the japs, china, germans, etc all have a leg up on us technology and innovation wise.

we are dumbing our kids down and discouraging the exploration of radio and electronics and pushing ipads, ps3, tv, smartphones, etc.

 

[W2NJS]

This thread has dragged on to the point where continuing it is senseless. So let's all stop banging our heads on the desk trying to convince this guy of anything; he's a lost cause. (The VHF 2M ham band is shared with others? I guess that chart on my wall that shows it's a 100% ham band must be wrong.)
Writing anything more here is akin to recognizing a jammer on your repeater.

 

[zz0468]

This thread has dragged on to the point where continuing it is senseless. So let's all stop banging our heads on the desk trying to convince this guy of anything; he's a lost cause. (The VHF 2M ham band is shared with others? I guess that chart on my wall that shows it's a 100% ham band must be wrong.)
Writing anything more here is akin to recognizing a jammer on your repeater.

Yep. I have to agree. I think that part of the thread has been driven thoroughly into the ground. I can find no documented non-ham use of the 2 meter ham band in the U.S., which is no surprise. The band is surrounded on both sides by federal allocations. It makes no sense to utilize a very popular 2 meter repeater input frequency. Oh well...

 

[reedeb]

it's those attitudes against innovation and tinkering that the newbie no code hams seem to have is why i no longer talk on the ham bands.

i like to tinker and every time i try to get into the technical aspect of the hobby i usually get ignored off the repeater.
.

I don't think it's THEIR attitude. IF you are talking to folks the way you are posting on this forum I think iI would ignore you off a repeater as well. Apparently YOU feel like everyone MUST carry on a conversation like YOU feel they should [almost like some professor] You attempt to blame no code hams YES blame the no coders over everything. I suppose you'll find something else to blame them on also. I see you're selling all your Ham equipment and getting out of ham. Oh well GOOD BYE!!!!

 

[WayneH]

This thread has turned in to bickering and those that need to turn discussions in to drag out debates. People, take a step back from the computer, open a window and take a breath of fresh air.

Or take it to a repeater. :lol: