Especially for Australian Standard and some Foundation amateur operators, the revised Australian amateur licence conditions come as a bit of a damp squib.
After all there was no sign of the widely requested and expected increased power output limits and frequency privileges. Hence our Foundation licensees will continue with ten watts and our Standards will still not have 50 MHz.
However what all hams did get were freed up mode restrictions. This means that, provided power density is kept to under 1w per 100 kHz, amateurs can experiment with wideband digital modes. And Standard hams get to transmit amateur television on their UHF allocations.
Foundation licensees gain the most. Removing mode restrictions means that they can enjoy digital modes. This will make their 10 watts go better and further. However their four letter callsign suffixes may be a challenge for some mode formats.
Also gone are restrictions on building your own transmitting gear, computer control, sending computer-generated Morse, showing others amateur radio and connecting to the phone system. These restrictions made our Foundation conditions quite tight.
A three minute video summary on what's changed and what hasn't is below.
PS: Heard about my new book? It's Australia's own amateur radio handbook. Available in both electronic and paperback form, you can find out more here.
No comments:
Post a Comment