Dear Fellow Amateur,
         I have been alarmed recently by the amount of commercial interest in the use of our bands, in particular 70cm.

You may well be aware that in NSW we have effectively lost the lower 12MHz of the 70cm band, initially for the Olympics. Do not be surprised if we never get this portion back. Motorola have been after this band for years and now have their foot in the door.

What you may not be aware of is that there is now also an allocation outlined in section 17 of the schedule "Low Interference Potential Devices" originally released in June 1997. This allocation allows 25mW transmitters to legally operate on any of the input frequencies of our 70cm repeaters without a license. Being employed in the communications area I am starting to see a significant rise in the amount of equipment using this band. I have recently been asked to design a mass-market use transmitter on a frequency which turned out to be the input frequency of a local repeater!

In the city areas, a large number of people have migrated from using 2 metre repeaters to 70cm in an attempt to try to avoid the adjacent channel interference problems caused by paging transmitters. Unless something is done soon, over time our repeater network on 70cm will become unusable also, but this time due to legally generated in-band interference.

Attached is a letter of complaint which as a paying spectrum user I urge you to sign, date and post to your nearest ACA office without delay. I suggest to keep sending the letter, or even better, a similar one of your own wording on a regular basis until the problem has been, in your view, adequately resolved. Don’t use email or web as these can be easily ignored.

Only your effort can help stop the erosion of our bands! Don’t leave the job to someone else!

Sincerely,

Bryan Ackerly.
Member of the Eastern and Mountain Districts Radio Club Inc.