fair enough.

I thought the US had a similar 70CM band plan to canada that designates fm 
simplex frequencies on the band to the 446MHZ area?
I know the 70CM national calling frequency for Canada is 446.000...and I've 
never heard of any simplex designations below 440.
I guess I'm just thinking that we manage to get by, in most places, with 
4MHZ of band width on VHF, so why do we need 30MHZ of band width, or 20MHZ 
in Canada, on a band that is seldom used in most places?
I know people are going to come back and say that UHF repeaters are just as 
plentiful as VHF...while this may be true to some extent, VHF is still the 
prefered repeater band in North America.  UHF gets used only when the VHF 
band is too congested or when operators wish to get away from other 
operators by using a different band that isn't as popular.
We have the 220 band which barely gets used, we have the 900MHZ band which 
barely gets used...we have a tonne of spectrum and bands that aren't used, 
yet we like to fight over losing 20MHZ of a huge chunk of spectrum that is 
only slightly more used that the other UHF bands that are hardly used.
I do agree about the satellite stuff though...lots of money and time and 
effort has gone into the am sats, and they can't exactly be changed once 
they're up there, so taking away the frequencies they operate on would 
eliminate that tiny little aspect of ham radio.
I can literally count on one hand the number of hams in this part of Alberta 
who even have the gear to operate into satelites, and even fewer who 
actually do it.
I would gladly exchange a part of the 400MHZ band for alocations on the 4M 
or 70MHZ band...or perhaps in the 180 MHZ range...IE dig into the old tv 
spectrum.
73
Colin, V A6BKX
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Howard Kaufman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2011 11:33 PM
Subject: Re: be aware of bill hr607


> With the number of radios that cross band repeat, as well as the current
> band plan which leaves no clear hole for simplex operation, many repeater
> links and cross band radios use the 4435 to 440 band segment.  The 430 to
> 435 segment is used by very expensive satellite stations talking to very
> expensive satellites.  The investment has been made.