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Mark, K6HX recently asked what people are thinking regarding the “looming spectrum crisis” and the various “spectrum inventory” acts that are currently winding their way through Congress. Mark and I seem to be more or less in agreement regarding what may be around the corner:

When we say that our “ham radio political leaders” should remain vigilant against possible spectrum reallocation, I think that we are shifting the responsibility (and in the future, likely the blame) to them, when the responsibility really lies with us. We as radio amateurs are simply not doing enough to justify our use of UHF+ spectrum. When we rely on political action committees to justify our use of this valuable public resource, we should be working hard to provide them with every possible justification that they can use. It isn’t Congress who is placing these frequencies in peril: it is our own inactivity which does so. If we lose 1.2GHz, or 220Mhz, or any of our other allocations, it will be because we frankly aren’t using them enough. If I thought that these frequencies could be effectively used to give Internet broadband to millions of underserved Americans, I’d have to say “take those frequencies, we will miss them, but we had our chance with them”.

Mark hits the nail right on the head with this statement. If we lose any bands it’s our own fault for lack of activity on them. While I don’t think 70cm (think PAVE PAWS) and below are in danger, everything else is fair game, and this includes my beloved 33cm. I am very much a “life begins at 50MHz” kind of amateur and I wish we would see more use of the GHz bands, especially 12cm (2.4GHz) but I realize that most Hams hardly venture above 148MHz, and 95% of the experimentation in the community is below 30MHz. What does this mean when the Feds come knocking on the ARRL’s door asking for spectrum?

Game Over Man! Game Over!

Amateur Radio, in its current state, cannot justify the spectrum it’s given. Period. Full Stop. No amount of wharrgarbling about public service or what kind of value we provide is going to change that. Go ahead and read the ARRL’s Frequency Allocation page and ask yourself how many bands you’ve used in the past week, month, or year. Heck, even go back five years. I bet that most of you have never gone above 2M. Anthony, K3NG, takes an even more dower view in the comments section which I have a hard time disagreeing with:

Even if we would start using these bands more, I’m not sure that would be enough to keep them from being reallocated, even if we could get 50% of our active amateurs on them. If we calculate how many bits/hertz are currently being used in our spectrum versus what would be used if reallocated, and perhaps even take it a step further to model the geographical aspects and frequency reuse, it’s hard to objectively argue against mobile wireless use of these bands. Unfortunately we’re not going to be able to depend on the classic defense based on emcomm use or experimentation; the potential public benefit is just too great…

So, the question is, what can we do? I think we have two options, both of which, if they happen, will cause lamentations the like we have never seen across QRZ and eHam.

#1 Roll over – This is obvious. We lose, they win their spectrum, and we’re further sidelined into obscurity. While I don’t think this will happen and I’m sure that many of you agree, there is a distinct chance that the FCC will make a power grab for the “greater good” and legislate some of our bands out of existence without giving us a second look. Why? Because the amount of people served by expanded wireless service is pretty much a “no brainer” kind of decision. Since everyone on the federal level is hopping on the “broadband for everyone” bandwagon, passing off this kind of action will easily pass the “public approval” sniff test.

#2 Play lets make a deal – We play the cards we’ve been given and we proactively start making plans to give up bands and if we see the writing on the wall, we proactively approach the FCC with options. While, yes, you are correct, this approach did not work out well for Neville Chamberlain (Please note, I am *not* comparing the FCC to Hitler) we might be able to salvage concessions that guarantee the future of the hobby and bands. Give up 1.25M, 23cm, and 3300-3500 MHz for a law or something to guarantee the rest of our spectrum? I’d be OK with that.

These are not going to be easy decisions that are forthcoming if the Feds start scrounging for spectrum. I am pretty sure we’re going to lose any battle that comes to it. I think we as a hobby need to start figuring out what we are going to do now rather then run around like chickens with our heads cut off when the tax man cometh.

The other obvious part to this is that we should also start pushing the use of more of our spectrum. Why am I not seeing the ARRL start pushing for simple 2.4GHz data projects? With the demise of packet radio beyond APRS and the HUGE FREAKING SWATH OF IPv4 ADDRESS SPACE we have why don’t we see a organized effort for creating low cost homebrew builds? Instead, the ARRL is focusing on 40M while the HSMM page is so old it has dust on it. Way to go ARRL.

Ever since I started in Ham Radio, my band of choice has been 2M. I started on that band in 1995 when I first started operating and I continue to use it every day when I am in the car commuting back and forth from the commuter rail station. When I was living in the Boston area, I didn’t have a radio capable of operating on 70cm, so 2M was the band of choice. When I finally got a radio that could operate on 70cm, it was after PAVE PAWS severely limited the repeaters in the southeastern Massachusetts area, so the usefulness was rather limited.

Since I got back in the hobby, I had heard murmurs of Hams repurposing commercial equipment for operation in various bands. I never really looked into it as I figured that it involved mucking about in circuits and soldering, two skills I am not good at and didn’t want to try to learn on a semi-expensive radio. When I volunteered at the AMSAT table in Boxboro, Steve Meuse, N1JFU, while showing me a Motorola Maxtor radio he recently picked up at the flea market, explained to me that not all radios needed hardware modifications and that there were plenty of radios that were ready to go and just needed to be modified in the software. He pointed me to the GEMOTO and NEAR-900 groups which I subscribed to soon after and lurked.

The nearest repeater to my location was Fall River. A bit of a chip shot, but far enough that I didn’t want to risk buying a radio in case I couldn’t talk on it. I live in a bit of a low-lying area, so it’s often difficult to hit repeaters even if they are close by. However, come December, SCMARG installed a repeater in Dartmouth, the next town over from me. I was sure I could talk on it, so I started looking for a cheap radio I could buy.

The NEAR-900 folks were very helpful in suggesting radios for me. Also, after the repeater went live, Jeff, N1ZZN made another helpful post on the SCMARG list. I started stalking eBay for a cheap used radio. By some small miracle I was able to get $75 from @Beaker by sending him a picture of a bunny with a pancake on his head. (Long story.) Within a week I found a great deal on a used MTX9000 B3 and charger for $70. Santa arrived early and it showed up on my doorstep just before Christmas. I needed it programmed, and again NEAR-900 came to the rescue. John, N1OTY, responded to my plea for “Help! I need it programmed” with an offer of assistance. Sunday I headed over to his house and he graciously programmed my radio. He answered all my questions and made sure everything worked.

I have since had the radio for a few weeks and I must say it’s a great band. While Dartmouth is the only repeater that works from my house and I’ve only heard a handful of SCMARG people on the system, in Boston the Waltham repeater, which is tied into a few other 900MHz repeaters, works great and is fairly active. I can talk on the repeater througout the downtown area and I monitor it from my desk at work during the day. During the GEMOTO “900 Days”, which are Thursdays in which we try to make the band active as possible, the Waltham repeater almost always has a coversation on it. The people I’ve talked to and listened to are very friendly and fairly technical, unlike a lot of the small talk-esque conversations you find on 2M.

There are a few things to get used to: Most of the 900MHz repeaters do not have a “squelch tail”, which is a common “feature” of Ham Radio repeaters to let you know it had heard you. This was very confusing to me at first as I wasn’t sure I was making it to the repeater. Also, my radio, despite lacking a display, has a scan feature. When scanning, if a signal is heard, I have to manually tune the radio to the channel I want to operate on. This can be confusing if the transmission is short. A lot of people solve this by annoucing the repeater they are using. Finally, since my radio is a bit older, it uses NiCd batteries rather then the newer NiMH type. This means that I have to drain the battery before I charge it, which is something that I haven’t had to think about in years.

So far I am pleased, it’s fun to try out a new band  and it’s a feeling of being on something a bit “experimental” as it’s still fairly limited. Coverage is great, and the Motorola radios are very solid, albeit a touch heavy. If you are a Ham in the southern New England area, I highly recommend you give it a try. If you are outside of the area and are looking for a band relatively free of interference and users, I suggest you give 33cm a look.