Subj : 
To   : Peter May
From : Roy Witt
Date : Sun May 28 2000 12:08 am

Hello Peter.

24 May 00 07:39, you wrote to me:

 RW>> but; 10-4 Good buddy.  And so he allocated a portion of 11 meters
 RW>> to them.

 PM> I thought 11 metres was seen as "unused by HAMs" by pirate operators,

I wasn't a HAM back in those days, but from what I understand, it wasn't
being used and so the re-apportionment by the FCC.

 PM> it was commandered, cheaply made American CB radios were easily
 PM> available and widelyused, not to army war surplus equipment such as
 PM> the PRC88. Intruder watches byamateurs were a waste of time.

That was much later, maybe ten years after CB came into being.  I remember
a few guys who pioneered SSB 'sliders' in the late sixties and the
exclusive use of channel 15b and 16.  15a was an allocated channel, 15b
was for radio control usage, which required a different license.

 PM> Widespread pirating continued, the government did not have the
 PM> resources tocontrol the situation as every man and his dog bought
 PM> "illegal" CB radio gearso they brought out a "CB" licence. At least
 PM> that's the Australian story, Iwas there, I was a pirate.

The pirates in the US utilized the space between 27.405 and 28.000 MHz for
thier communications.  It was also happening long before channel 23 was
the highest channel for use in American CB.  I was there with my trusty
Kenwood TS-520 and an old Heath 'Apache Warrior' with 1200 watts.  I've
long since removed the crystal that controls the VFO, however.

 PM> In a nutshell, if you dont use it you lose it!  This is your wakeup
 PM> call! If the Govt sees a portion of spectrum that appears unused (had
 PM> a listen to HF lately?) it can and will reallocate that spectrum.  It
 PM> may auction the spectrum off (revenue raising) to mining companies
 PM> and the like or reallocate it to other purposes.

We have a magazine editor, you may have heard of him; Wayne Green of 73
Magazine - who long ago said that we should auction off all of the
'amateur' sprectrum we're not using.  Course, the FCC might have something
to say about that.



.... HAM (n) 2. Acronym for Hasn't Any Money.
--- Twit(t) Filter v2.1 (C) 2000
 * Origin: Kissed By 6 Pretty Indians (1:10/22)

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