SSB ATU - HAM AND MARINE?

Jon and Mike,

Is it just me, or the entire Amateur community that you treat with derision??

You didnt like it when I suggested commercial forces at play, in the same way I object to this.
Why cant we have something positive from either of you, a willingness to help us get the regulations changed would be a start.

Steve.
 
As someone on here stated the chance of getting the rules changed for the good of the few is very small.

Even with the help of the RSGB the chances IMHO are very small.

This move will not aid the vast majority of marine radio users.

For my own part I have work at any Ham rallies through the years.
I have a very unique insite in to this world and the work of the RSGB.

I will pass you comments and feedback on to the Ham dept here.
If they feel there is any merit in your suggestions they will take up the batton.

regards
 
A bit late but been out of touch for a while,

Are you really saying that I can use a 1940s vintage 19 set, built for use in a tank, to talk to my friends on 80M and be legal, but if I use a sophisticated Icom marine SSB to do the same thing I am breaking the law.

Surely not.
 
Unusually, John, I disagree with you.

I own a Heathkit transceiver, elderly 1950/60 vintage.

I tunes, amongst other frequencies, 3.5 - 4 MHz. Common amongst many similar machines using a 500kHz tuning range.

The range from 3.8 - 4.0 MHz is not part of the band on which I can transmit in the UK, but is available to US amateurs.

According to my understanding of what Jon is saying is that I am breaking the law by owning this machine.

I have other old equipment that is capable of transmitting outside the amateur bands that I am licensed to use. Do these also mean I am breaking the law?

I do not believe that to be the case.

I offer the analogy of my motor car. It is capable of a speed of more than 120 mph, but unless I drive it at such a speed I am not breaking the law by simply owning it.

What we are seeing here is the usual burocrats arguement. Unless they can stop people doing things they have no purpose, therefore they create means of stopping things to demonstrate some purpose, however pointless.
 
Steve

Agree with much of what you say, but have to draw the line here.

To misquote Brendan Behan:

"I can think of no situation that cannot be made worse by the presence of the RSGB"
 
Whilst the kit may be simple to you.
To the vast majority it is far from simple.
After all it is still a 4 day course to get you LRC.
The RAE can take a whole lot longer.

If it were that simple the LRC would be as long/short as the SRC surely?

Whilst the RSGB may have a view I am not sure how their in put would help.
This is a marine issue not really a ham issue.

The people that need convincing are those who make up the rules for R&TTE/type approval.

If they say the radio can be used for both then we are laughing.
If they don't then nothing will happen.

Regards
 
But Jon the these courses do not centre only on operating an SSB - they include lots of other equipment -

All this may be relevant to the merchant marine but has little relevance to a person in a small yacht with a SSB which we all agree has little 'safety value'.

Propagation is not a fixed science but the basics are pretty simple Day, Night - distance.

Who cares about antenna - mobile phones have antenna - In a yacht you have an insulted back stay - an ATU and your Icom. Switch on - tune to the 'net' or Herb - always the same frequency for TX - Rx and off you go...

There is nothing in the operation of an SSB that cannot be taught in a morning.

If you want to care about Antenna lengths, TXing on really low power, Very long distance communications - Sydney to London then become a Ham - wonderful hobby. If you want to chat to your mates in the West Indies - south pacific - join the net for safety issues then it really is no harder than VHF and mobile phone operation - only the authorities - schools make it appear challenging!
 
Hi Bergman

No, I think we are probably on the same wavelength with respect to how we think it should be, at least.

Firstly, I don't think there is any difficulty with possessing any commercial set that met the type approval requirements in place at the time it was first sold and, of course, at one time there were no such approvals. That is so everywhere I know, existing sets do not become illegal just because the type approval requirements change. Once the set is in the amateur's hands then he is entitled to experiment by modifying the set and even selling it second hand with those modifications.

But for the case of modifying a set to TX outside of amateur bands one would have to ask if that is actually amateur experimentation, after all the amateur could not do anything with the modification as to transmit outside of the amateur bands would be illegal. Furthermore, I made the point that if one had such a modified radio on a vessel which carried a maritime mobile licence and no marine set on board, then I suspect one would be opening oneself to the possibility of trouble. In the case of small overlap outside of amateur bands for commercial sets as you quote, that is still the case (I assume the same in UK), of course, with new sets today but they are type approved as such and is a natural consequence of building a frequency agile radio (as opposed to a channelised one).

For the sake of clarity, I am not promoting that amateurs should not be allowed to possess radios that can TX outside of the amateur bands, just stating that what Mike is saying is likely to be strictly correct. In the end, in most places I don't think anyone much fusses though as the main emphasis on policing amateur activity is on operation (malicious interference, out of band transmissions, etc) not on the the equipment itself beyond the point of sale as it is an experimental hobby and that in itself must create grey areas when operating side by side with other services.

Not sure if in this thread or another, I actually promote amateurs being able to operate in multiple services (maritime mobile and amateur) on a single radio and again, in most places, that is allowed (at least a blind eye turned to it even if strictly outside the law) - although I do appreciate the difficulties that poses if the radio/boat is then sold to a non amateur.

John
 
Hi John

I agree that much of this debate is theoretic in that prosecutions are rare despite the continuing use of the radio spectrum by completely unlicensed operators, one only has to listen around 6.5 MHz to hear them. This is not new - this unofficial band was used 40 years ago when I started in the radio game - mostly using 19 sets that were at their best around this sort of frequency.

But

The UK authorities about 2 years ago made a variation in terms available to "a small number" of amateurs to use 5 (very) specific frequencies around 5.5MHz in a band used for military communications. The USA followed with a similar variation on similar terms but slightly different frequencies.

Now the only practical way to do this with a modern Japanese transceiver is to "modify" it to transmit on all frequencies, and this is acknowledged by the RA and the RSGB.

Clearly in carrying out this modification, in my case operating a switch, the set is capable of transmitting on all frequencies from around 150kHz to 30 MHz. It cannot be otherwise.

Any set with this capability ie a sythesised frequency generator, must have type approval. Is it the case that the RA and RSGB have advised amateurs in the UK to operate equipment illegally by operating it other than in the state for which it received type approval, I think not.

Considering this type of equipment which the vast majority of amateurs use today, all are synthesised and all have the capability of multiple memory facilities. I see no sensible reason why the appropriate maritime channels being programmed into the transceivers memory will not meet the requirements of maritime use. As you well know that is all that commercial marine SSB sets do - as you quite correctly pointed out about the Icom machine.

I maintain that the set of rules that the RA are seeking to enforce exist to maintain a burocracy and not to prevent interference.

The fact is that with a modern transceiver to interfere significantly with any essential service on the HF bands would require a degree of knowledge beyond that casual user people would have. Anyone capable of doing serious damage would have the know how to do it with homebrew or modified commercial equipment and would not be deterred at all by any type approval legislation.

As a sort of side issue, but related to the debate, governments have always had a fear of individuals communicating with other individuals. From the earliest days they were insistent on the ability to intercept cables and have always viewed radio in its many forms with suspicion. And this in a democratic country! Perhaps what we have here is some sort of throwback to that attitude, despite the fact that people of really ill will now use the Internet. HF radio is just not reliable enough for the modern terrorist.

73
 
Hi Bergman

I believe with reference to your Any set with this capability ie a sythesised frequency generator, must have type approval. Is it the case that the RA and RSGB have advised amateurs in the UK to operate equipment illegally by operating it other than in the state for which it received type approval, I think not. the situation is in most places is that the amateur set only has to have type approval to be put on the market by the manufacturer/distributor. It does not have to maintain that type approval once first sold which is, of course, different to other services.

The fact that an amateur may subsequently modify it is not af any relevance due to their right to experiment. I think the difficulty is justifying that broadbanding TX on the transceiver is part of that right given that doing so is of no legal use to the amateur. But, whatever, doing so is accepted, one way or another, in most places (and I suspect also is so in the UK regardless of the what the strict legality of it is).

I personally do not agree with approval of amateur radios being accepted for marine service use by amateurs. One reason is due to the simplicity of use of a marine transceiver in comparison, especially in times of stress. For example, I think most of us have turned an amateur transceiver on at some time or another and wondered why it was "not working" and felt a bit of a fool afterwards - that is not possible with a marine set. Another is that a marine set, even those with comparatively good frequency agility such as the IC-M802, start up channelised when turned on whereas with an amateur set when turned on they are in VFO not memory mode and there are separate controls for each (and indeed, may be several independant VFO's).

Being the most frequency agile marine radio (plus I am very familiar with it) I can use the M802 as an example. When you turn it on it fires up on the last channel operated. To tune it in an agile way, say for amateur use, one has to either program a TX/RX channel (keypadding in the RX then TX frequencies separately as on other marine radios) or set it to an already programmed one then use the Channel Group Selection knob to select the tuning rate eg 100kHz, 1000kHz, etc if the default 100kHz is not wanted, then use the channel knob as a VFO type knob to tune away from the selected channel frequency at the selected tuning rate (assuming that the set has been enabled to do this in the first place).

So, again as an example, to use the M802 on amateur frequencies, I generally have a user channel programmed with TX/RX frequency in the middle of each band, and then to operate select the channel for the relevant band, and push the button allowing me to tune away from that using the Group and Channel knobs.

Quite a tiresome explanation but it serves to show that even with the M802 it is essentially impossible to turn it on and make a mistake by TX out of authorised band or, in the case of the marine side, to transmit off frequency with respect to the channelisation of the service (say accidently call on 4152 instead of 4125kHz), unless one has actually physically programmed such an incorrect frequency into the radio beforehand.

There is also the small matter of DSC the move to which would be obstructed if non DSC radios were encouraged to enter the market. Some may think that would be a good thing, but personally I regard DSC as a very important advantage. Here I am talking about the technical advantages of DSC not necssarily all of the things that have come into its operational functionality. Probably any amateur who has worked alot of digital modes would appreciate the technical advantages.

But putting all that aside, I do think that it should be easy for amateurs to use a single radio for marine/amateur operation and the M802 has gone a long way towards that, from the radio point of view, with its psuedo VFO function. From what I understand Jon has said (RX only outside of Marine channels), that will not be the same for the EU version when it comes out, which I think is a great pity (but obviously not Jon's fault).

John
 
HAM AND MARINE?

searching the web this morning for info on the LRC & came across this thread. I was thinking that the pricing was a bit stiff, & was there was an option to take the exam only, still no definitive answer.

When I took the VHF course, I ended up helping out with procedures & phonetic alphabet !

Any suggestions as to where to apply pressure so we can solve this nonsense?

G0MKK (ex G1) +VHF GMDSS
 
Re: HAM AND MARINE?

[ QUOTE ]
When I took the VHF course, I ended up helping out with procedures & phonetic alphabet !

[/ QUOTE ]

Oh no! Please don't tell me there is now a classfull of people using ham procedure on marine VHF. aaarrrggghhh
 
What is the difference between a 4WD in the sand dune of Sahara desert and a boat in the middle of the Pacific. Water and sand, so why treat it differently, all we want to do is to talk to other people. Oh, forgot, MONEY, they can get more money out of us that way. With commercial shipping using sat radio, what is the red tape people thinking. Amature radio is also dead, replaced be the internet and skype phone, who is there left to use ssb radio, not many, so why not clean up this mess.This is after all 2005, and not 1960.
They will fine you more for opening a radio, then killing a couple of people in a car hit and run drunk driving accident. Where is the logic in that.
We must keeping pushing for a fair go, and equal treatment. Sand or water, makes no difference.
 
Ps. A few years ago when I was going for my marine radio license, I was reading in a amature radio mag, that tha Russians had deployed a sat with a SSB REPEATER onboard, does anyone know anyhing more about that?? I think it was in 97 or 98.
 
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