When the news that a french company wants to share the 2m band with drones avery ham radio operator immediately thought that this is a perfect non sense. But how does one even come up to such an idea? Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH provides an interesting point on the SOTA mail group.
Here is what he says:
I think some proposals for frequency allocations are transparent in their demonstration of how poorly vhf propagation is understood.
If one of the proposers of this “band sharing” was to look at a ham using an HT, he would think, no problem, in the next few km this signal will be inaudible.
Take them into a typical ham shack or mobile and demonstrate repeater usage, he still thinks ham radio is repeaters. Nothing more than CB on different frequencies.
Take him to a weak signal high power operator’s shack and he possibly starts to understand vhf ham radio is not as simple as that unfortunate phrase “line of sight”.
Take him to an EME operator and let him view contacts being made via moon reflection. On the band he thought was just used by hand held radios.
Then let him consider what the prospects are for these various operations sharing that band with their little airborne toys.
Unless education of these people is undertaken, mistakes like this could be made by many more people who again, simply do not understand what radio does, what vhf is capable of and why separation of services by frequency is so important, even for vhf and even world wide.
This education and representation is the role and purpose of the IARU and it is the national societies which support the IARU. This is why we join our national societies so if this reason has escaped anyone, let them please take action to join their national societies, Leagues or Institutes etc. and when they ask for signatures to support their actions at IARU and later ITU meetings, support them…
Andrew VK1DA/VK2UH
Andrew considers that those people at Thales have a wrong conception of what hams do witht he 2m band, and only see it as a deluxe CB band. Generally speaking, the whole muggles population, has no idea of what hams do. The problem we face here is the main problem, how to advertise amateur radio. In the light of this message it is clear that we lack good marketing. Showing off what we do is our best defence.
Right below. Armin DL6GCA makes another good point:. The lobbyist are considerign ham radio and 2m band through the eyes of France where the service is decaying. They thought, “with about 13000 amateur radio operators, only half of them actually active, what could go wrong?”. Well they are wrong, the situation is different in other countries and the worldwide backfire just proves them wrong.