Back in the late 1960s, they called it Incentive licensing. It was to
encourage hams to upgrade from general class to Advanced or Extra. Going to
Advanced gave you back what you lost as a general but eventually, additional
band space was given to extras and advanced operators. It bummed me out big
time because the bottom 25 KHz was where I hung out a majority of my CW
time. I didn't care much about what they did with the phone bands but
eventually, I gave up and studied to take my advanced. A year or so later I
passed the Extra. Now I like that extra phone band space, for what it's
worth, but it was the CW frequencies I craved. Now, if you don't have the
extra class, you've got to keep a list of all the frequencies and where you
can, and cannot, operate. Speaking of which, when I first got on 15 meters,
I had full privileges. I tuned around the phone band one day with my Drake
TR4 and heard, for the first time in my life, a VE7 calling CQ. I jumped on
him and prayed he'd hear my 40 meter dipole I was using on 15 meters. He
did and he replied and we talked for 20 minutes. After we signed, I was
entering things into my Braille log book so I remained on frequency. Almost
immediately after we signed, a friend of the VE7, somewhere else in Canada,
called his friend I just signed with and they began talking. The new guy
said, hey Joe, did you realize you guys are 20 KHz below the American phone
band? It didn't take me long to make sure I knew where I could go and not
go. Now it sounds like they are considering cutting some band area for more
digital frequencies to be able to spread out. Shoot, I already often hear
RTTY as low as 7032 on 40 meters. Half the 30 meter band is already digital
transmissions, too. I've thought for years the CW bands were going to be
hacked down to 50 or 75 KHz in width so we will see what happens.
Phil.
K0NX
Phil.
Living His Name
WWW.SafePlaceFellowship.COM
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