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New Amateur Frequency Usage?

Jun 6th 2020, 21:16

wa6lzh

Joined: Jan 5th 2011, 02:07
Total Topics: 0
Total Posts: 0
I didn't find an exact match for my post so here I am. Sorry if I am taking up bandwidth.

I am mainly a CW and data user. Recently I fired up one or two of my old but venerable radios on forty meters. At the time I was using my Drake TR-7 on forty meters. I was happy the Sunspot showed up and there was some fairly good propagation.

In two off my my QSO's I was told but not rudely, that I was 50 cycles ( Oh excuse me I mean Hertz I thought they were a Car Rental?) and Although S-9+ I was not readable.

I've been a Radio Amateur for 63 years now and I had never heard of such a thing as requiring to be on a ,00 frequency. I have a suspicion that there is no real loss of intelligibility and of course most any radio has an RIT control especially the newer ones.

Other than my complaining will someone tell me that this is just a preference and not a rule or regulation or better practice if so as lot of Drake, Collins, Swans, Hall ete etc are going to be obsolete.

I doubt that a friends voice is intelligible enough to identify the person most of the time even if dead on frequency.

Maybe I'm wrong but I can learn.

Tony WA6LZH used to be WA2LBY in NYC



Jun 8th 2020, 08:33

WB1GCM

Super Moderator

Joined: Apr 4th 1998, 00:00
Total Topics: 0
Total Posts: 0
Tony,

You can operate on any Amateur frequency you are authorized to use by the class of your license. There are no regulations regarding channelization, aside from 60 meters where we share a band with the government.

I use an ARC-5 sometimes. The dial resolution gets you in the ballpark, a crystal is used in the transmitter as a reference for checking you dial. That's an 80 years old system.

There are those who are picky about time and frequency. I don't wear a watch and I shut my cell phone off when I don't use it. OH, the horror of it all.....

My only concern is measurement precision for publications.
Jun 17th 2020, 15:32

K8BZ

Joined: Apr 4th 1998, 00:00
Total Topics: 0
Total Posts: 0
There seems to be a pretty common belief that you can not operate on any HF frequency other than full Khz spots. It amazes me how common this false belief is. Someone, somewhere must be teaching this erroneous info. I speculate that part of the reason may be due to newer ops who don't know how to set their tuning step on newer radios to anything be 500 hz or full Khz steps.

Hand in had with that is the far too common, just as wrong belief that you can measure the resistance across your antenna connector with an ohm meter and it should read 50 ohms of resistance. AND if it reads zero ohms your antenna is faulty. I was a minority of one, at one time trying to convince a new ham not to dismantle his tower and antenna looking for the problem when everyone else was assuring him that they were right and I was wrong. Fortunately he delayed long enough to discover his transmitter was bad, but his antenna was fine.

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