Re: Complaint about LIPD transmitter in 70cm Amateur band

Dear Sir,
 I am very disappointed that devices such as the one attached to this letter are being able to be sold and used by the general public. A device such as this has the potential to cause large amounts of interference to just about every repeater on the 70cm band. A device operating as per the attached specification is capable of generating direct interference to more than 80 listed voice repeaters throughout Australia, all of which are located in high altitude locations which are directly susceptible to interference generated by devices of this nature.

Over the past weekend, a number of amateur radio operators proved that a similar rated transmitter of the type marketed to the general public by Dick Smith Electronics operating under the LIPD schedule can easily have a range of more than 50km. This device has a 20mW transmitter. A device with such a range can hardly be regarded as having a "low interference potential".

On the 15th of March this year, a popular suburban voice repeater was jammed for more than three hours by a device located more than 500 metres away which was operating as per the LIPD legislation.

As a paying and active user of this spectrum, I am disappointed that there seems to be nothing being done about this poorly researched legislation which allows a license free user operating under the LIPD guidelines to cause interference to our service. The same guidelines also state that the LIPD user must not cause interference to a higher priority service such as the one we pay a license fee to use.

I also have very little confidence that interference problems that we encounter with any LIPD device will be acted upon by your department with the same urgency that any other paying user of the radio spectrum would receive. I also understand that when this legislation was originally in draft, a submission against it was raised by the Wireless Institute of Australia (WIA) who were acting on behalf of more than 17000 licensed Amateur Radio operators. Despite this, the legislation was passed. I therefore conclude that either the WIA’s submission was totally ignored or that the ACA had intended to pass the legislation regardless. The latter is also evident from the frequency range chosen as it specifically encompasses the input range of virtually all of the 70cm voice repeaters.

For this reason I demand that the legislation which allows the use of these devices in the 70cm amateur band be immediately revoked and that the companies which are marketing devices under item 17 of the LIPD schedule be required to remove them immediately from public sale.
 

Sincerely,