A bill has been recently introduced which could result in amateurs losing their currently allocated frequencies on the 70cm band (420-440Mhz). The ARRL is asking that folks write to their legislators to oppose the bill in it's current form. The FCC is proposing to auction off certain spectrum for commercial use to replace the spectrum given up in the 700Mhz band (formerly used for analog TV) to help make up for the loss of commercial revenue in those bands. The spectrum slated for auction is supposed to be existing Public Safety spectrum (since the 700Mhz block went to Public Safety), but the Amateur allocations appear to have been incorrectly bundled in with those from Public Safety. You can read more about this issue at the ARRL website here and you can read how to help here. Please note that they strongly recommend sending letters to their legislative consultants who will hand-deliver them to Congress due to extensive delays in postal mail screening to members of Congress. It's very easy to do! After downloading the sample letter from ARRL and editing it with your info you can go to http://www.congress.org and register with their website just paste the email into a simple Write Your Lawmakers form from the link at the top right side of the web page after signing into your congress.org account. Onec you've pasted the edited letter into the congress.org form you can preview it and then click send and it's sent. Very simple and easy to do! Only takes about 15 minutes maximum of your time and well worth it to protect out frequency spectrum! Thanks for your help and very 73!
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)