Proposed 80/160 meter calling frequency changes

[Mooneer Salem]

Hi all,

I received a request to update the 80 and 160 meter calling frequencies to better align with the IARU Region 3 band plan and Japanese amateur radio rules. With that in mind, I'm suggesting the following:

1. Add an additional calling frequency at 3.580 MHz (as this is usable in all IARU regions), and

2. Replace the current 160 meter calling frequency (1.997 MHz) with 1.912 MHz (while 1.997 MHz is available in all three IARU regions, it's not acceptable according to current Japanese rules. Additionally, there seems to be little FreeDV activity on 160 meters at the moment, so impact should be minimal.)

Feedback would definitely be appreciated in case I missed something and this proposal will actually cause problems. Additionally, I noticed there are currently five 80 meter frequencies on the FreeDV Reporter "Calling Frequencies" tab; should those be pared down as well?

Thanks,

-Mooneer K6AQ

[Mooneer Salem]

Hi all,

I received some further feedback off-list and instead of 3.580 MHz, how about 3.612 MHz?

Thanks,

-Mooneer K6AQ

[Dudley Hurry]

Still out of general ticket ops.  

73,

Dudley

WA5QPZ

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 11, 2025, at 4:40 PM, Mooneer Salem <moo...@gmail.com> wrote:



Hi all,

I received some further feedback off-list and instead of 3.580 MHz, how about 3.612 MHz?

Thanks,

-Mooneer K6AQ

On Sun, Feb 9, 2025 at 6:04 AM Mooneer Salem <moo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

I received a request to update the 80 and 160 meter calling frequencies to better align with the IARU Region 3 band plan and Japanese amateur radio rules. With that in mind, I'm suggesting the following:

1. Add an additional calling frequency at 3.580 MHz (as this is usable in all IARU regions), and

2. Replace the current 160 meter calling frequency (1.997 MHz) with 1.912 MHz (while 1.997 MHz is available in all three IARU regions, it's not acceptable according to current Japanese rules. Additionally, there seems to be little FreeDV activity on 160 meters at the moment, so impact should be minimal.)

Feedback would definitely be appreciated in case I missed something and this proposal will actually cause problems. Additionally, I noticed there are currently five 80 meter frequencies on the FreeDV Reporter "Calling Frequencies" tab; should those be pared down as well?

Thanks,

-Mooneer K6AQ

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[Tony Langdon]

160m is also out of band in Australia. We only have 1.800-1.875 MHz

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[Barry Jackson]

On 11/02/2025 22:39, Mooneer Salem wrote:
> Hi all,
>

> I received some further feedback off-list and instead of 3.580 MHz, how
> about 3.612 MHz?
>
> Thanks,

In the UK the RSGB have the "Digital Voice Centre of Activity" at 3.630.

RSGB band plan (recommendations, not to be confused with license
conditions) attached.

[Mooneer Salem]

Hi all,

How about 3.804 MHz and 1.870 MHz?

Thanks,

-Mooneer K6AQ

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[G D]

I wish everyone would realize just because it is digitized voice it is still NOT digital.  Digital implies NON voice data.  Therefore it is still required to be in voice segments.  

My 2cent

Glenn

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[Francis, ON3BSQ]

3804 kHz is outside the 80m band in Region 1.

1870 kHz is OK

Op donderdag 13 februari 2025 om 22:48:52 UTC+1 schreef G D:

[Facility 406]

> I wish everyone would realize just because it is digitized voice it
> is still NOT digital.

How is digital not digital, and at what point does digital change from
voice, to digital, or, digital, to voice? Is it digital over the air,
and voice when it comes out the speakers, or is it voice when digital on
the air, and digital when coming out the speakers as voice? Since
computers are used, is it entirely digital? As electrical impulses
generally only occupy one relative point in time and space any given
instant, is the brain digital, meaning all voice is digital anyway, even
voice voice, or just digital voice?

If I'm not familiar with the mode, spun the dial, and heard it, would I
know if the digital was digital digital, or voice digital digital? CW
is digital, but not voice, and if transcribed, and not read aloud, is it
voice, or only when spoken, and if not over the radio, does it even
count? What if digital CW is transcribed, and merely displayed for
view, but not read aloud? If it exists, and nobody reads it, does it
really exist, and was it really ever digital to begin with? What if one
reads it to themselves, silently, in their head?

Also interesting to note, than unlike AM, or FM, CW is NOT continuous
wave, but in fact, the exact opposite. Heck, even AM or FM isn't, when
it's done, but it's far more CW than "CW". I guess people forgot how
digital works when the ICW label was dropped from receivers. AM? FM?
SSB? No confusion. Call something CW that isn't, or even close, and
everyone got stupid.

Don't even get me stated on how "DC" certainly isn't, or even close, but
I digress...

>  Digital implies NON voice data.  Therefore it
> is still required to be in voice segments.

Who implies this, how, and where? Is my license limited by the
implications of others, or by the codes of the agency that issued it?

I dare say we all need to know.

Does having a license imply I can use it anywhere, for anything I want?
I generally use my radio licenses for radio stuff, but if I can use it
to teach goats Taushiro by beating them with wet noodles every third
Sunday during a waning moon in months that don't end in day, or have a 3
in them, that'd be pretty cool, too.

Who knew it could be so confusing, when the first word in "digital
voice" is "digital", and the signal itself isn't voice, or anything
identifiable as such, by anyone anywhere, who has very existed at any
point in time, when transmitted?

That why I love this hobby, so precise, and no ambiguity!

Kurt

[Bob Morris]

What we call CW is, in engineering terms, OOK (on off keying).

Bob

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[Bruce Perens]

It's kind of silly to say it's either digital or voice. It is always both. In the US, it is legal to use FreeDV everywhere that digital signals of the required bandwidth are allowed, and everywhere that radiotelephone signals are. Most other places in the world as well.

What ARRL says about it is irrelevant, and FCC can't stop it without first updating their rules.

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[Pierre Martel]

We already had this discussion a long time ago.

What is digital? What is voice? 

That is not the question. 

What is transported, what is the transporter. 

In freeDV the transported is voice, the transporter is digital 

In CW the transported and the transporter are both digital information. there is no voice at all in the whole process. 

same for FT8, PSK31, Hellscribe and the list goes on. all of those are digital. 

The only time this could be untrue is if someone had the great idea of sending a sound recording by packet. It would be very slow to send and not very useful. But this could not be considered voice communication as it is not in real time. Like sending slow scan images is not real time TV.

We could also have someone sending by voice some bits (one,zero) or some hex bytes, that could be recovered at the other side and be put back in a digital format at the receiving party but again not real time digital communication and not efficient at all. 

So freedv is voice sent digitally in real time. so it is voice communication. 

Pierre

VE2PF

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[glenn...@gmail.com]

I am aware.  Too bad there is a huge misunderstanding of DIGITAL.   The terms should be Phone and data.  Digital Voice is NOT data and should ONLY be used in the voice segments.

Digitized voice is STILL Voice or PHONE not data.

Not sure why CW was mentioned.  It is neither data or voice.  It also has its own segments on some bands.

 

Perhaps just open the bands to whatever and wherever.  That is what confusing digital does.

 

Just my last 2 cent. 

 

Glenn/Out

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[Pierre Martel]

If CW would be designed today, in a world where data or digital is already a known idea, what would it be assigned to? A specific part of the spectrum or the digital portion? 

Because it came way before the general acceptance of data as in computer data, it was not given the "digital" type of information exchange. Being that the decoding and encoding is done by ear and fist, made it more an analog system but it is very possible to use a computer to send and decode CW. What make it difficult for computer to decode is the variability of human sent CW. I used a computer to send and decode CW with a friend using the same setup at 50+ wpm without any error on 2 meter SSB 120 miles apart.  

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[Facility 406]

> Because it came way before the general acceptance of data as in computer
> data, it was not given the "digital" type of information exchange. Being
> that the decoding and encoding is done by ear and fist, made it more an

> analog system...

How would it be considered right now, without a thousand (or, even just
one, or two) ways to interpret it before, and after, the actual sending,
regardless of medium?

If there weren't feelings, or opinions, there would be no confusion.

Waiting for 74 different interpretations. We already have two in the
Amateur world, ICW/CW, but there's always that "queer" (as in peculiar)
third interpretation, OOK, the average radio operator would not know
about if it wasn't tossed into their face...

Kurt

[Pierre Martel]

One thing to consider with OOK is that it can be used with something else then morse code. 

If you want you can send baudot code with the addition of 2 bits, a start and a stop bit followed by a wait time to determine the start of the next code. This could be decoded by ears (well the bits at a minimum) and later on, it could be decoded from bits to character. There are 32 possible codes, less than morse. the 1 are a single dit, the 0 are no carrier. The start and stop bits are always 1 and you only need to be stable with the timing. If you don't want to use start and stop bits, you can also use the dit as one the dah as zero. a bit more longer to send if you have lots of zero and the length of sending a character varies in time. while working with start and stop bits make the length of every character exactly the same timing all the time. 

Anyways, we digress from the original subject a lot ;-) 

Pierre 

VE2PF

That would be considered digital sending 100% of the time. 

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[Mooneer Salem]

Yeah, the original proposal was simply to add a new 75/80m frequency and not eliminate any of the existing ones precisely because allocations differ so much between regions/countries. It would still be nice to have any frequencies be usable by as many people as possible though.

-Mooneer K6AQ

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[Mooneer Salem]

I agree, we really should just regulate by bandwidth and be done with it. Unfortunately, a lot of people have historically disagreed as the last proposal to do that for all of HF went down in flames (but at least there's still progress as instead of a symbol rate limit, we now have a bandwidth limit for the data portions of each HF band).

That said, regardless of people's feelings on emissions designators, that's how the bands are currently regulated in the US at the moment. (YMMV if you live elsewhere.) Whether something's a phone or data emission appears to depend mostly on the third character of the emissions designator. From the relevant portions of FCC Part 97:

(2) Data. Telemetry, telecommand and computer communications emissions having

(i) designators with A, C, D, F, G, H, J or R as the first symbol, 1 as the second symbol, and D as the third symbol;

(ii) emission J2D; and

(iii) emissions A1C, F1C, F2C, J2C, and J3C having an occupied bandwidth of 500 Hz or less when transmitted on an amateur service frequency below 30 MHz. Only a digital code of a type specifically authorized in this part may be transmitted.

(5) Phone. Speech and other sound emissions having designators with A, C, D, F, G, H, J or R as the first symbol; 1, 2, 3 or X as the second symbol; E as the third symbol. Also speech emissions having B or F as the first symbol; 7, 8 or 9 as the second symbol; E as the third symbol. MCW for the purpose of performing the station identification procedure, or for providing telegraphy practice interspersed with speech. Incidental tones for the purpose of selective calling or alerting or to control the level of a demodulated signal may also be considered phone.

(https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D/part-97#97.3)

Assuming we agree that FreeDV is *E (and I've heard arguments before that it isn't due to the embedded low bit rate data stream that's used for FreeDV Reporter), that means that under the current FCC rules (https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/section-97.305) FreeDV is legal only in the upper portions of each HF band* where phone can be used.

* 60 meters is regulated differently and based on my interpretation of the current FCC rules (https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/part-97/section-97.307#p-97.307(f)(14)), FreeDV is currently not legal for Americans to use in that band at all. 

-Mooneer K6AQ

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[Brian Morrison]

On Thu, 13 Feb 2025 21:22:35 -0800
Facility 406 <facili...@bruteforcedevelopment.com> wrote:

> How is digital not digital, and at what point does digital change
> from voice, to digital, or, digital, to voice?

In the case of digital voice using RADE the transmitted signal is
actually not digitally modulated but is in fact analogue modulation,
namely PSK without fixed constellation points or fixed relative phase
shift between each symbol. The Machine Learning aspect of RADE means
that the best S:N performance is achieved by allowing the modulator to
design its own constellation.

The old definitions of baud rate and voice, digital etc are becoming
outdated as the technology advances.

--

Brian G8SEZ

[Rick, W7IMM]

On Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 10:39:39 PM UTC-8 Bruce Perens wrote:

It's kind of silly to say it's either digital or voice. It is always both. In the US, it is legal to use FreeDV everywhere that digital signals of the required bandwidth are allowed, and everywhere that radiotelephone signals are. Most other places in the world as well.

What ARRL says about it is irrelevant, and FCC can't stop it without first updating their rules.

{emphasis mine}

And yes we have had this discussion before in a multi-recipient email discussion.  I am also of the opinion that FreeDV  would be "legal" anywhere on the US amateur bands that "Phone" or DATA/RTTY/CW etc is allowed.

We just have to do it!  I really don't think the FCC is going to sanction anyone for using it in the "digital" segments.  It's just another "digital signal"

There was a time I was pretty "hot" to try to get an experimental "license" to operate FreeDV outside the phone bands but the application process got the better of me.  It seems that that process is not really for individual amateurs and is more aimed at groups.

As far as calling frequencies go.   They're really irrelevant when you're using the FreeDV "Reporter".  You instantly know where everyone is hanging out so having a specific  "calling frequency" is just not necessary.

And, we certainly do not want suggested frequencies to be in segments that exclude anyone.  

Putting them in the Extra Class segments completely excludes General and Advanced class operators.

Also, the 10m "Calling" frequency in the Novice/Tech  Phone segment (28330kHz)   literally "dangles"  it in front of operators that are not legal to use anything other than SSB analog voice.

So if you want to use it on 160, use whatever you want.  I frequently use 1997 (and 1992) but it really doesn't matter what frequency I use because any other operator coming up on 160 instantly knows what frequency I'm on via the "Reporter"

Here in the PNW, 14236 for example,  is for the most part completely useless.  There's almost ALWAYS an SSB voice QSO going on 14234, 235, 236, 237  etc.

On 40m just about every evening the Mabuhay Net is on 7178 kHz,  so 7177 is virtually NOT usable on the entire west coast.  7299 seems to work well if the BC stations are not too strong but anywhere on 40m also seems to work.

Again, anyone using the Reporter will instantly find other stations if they're there.

So "Calling Frequencies" are ok.....but I'm more apt to use "Open" or "clear" frequencies instead.

Cheers,

Rick

W7IMM....originally, WB6IMM... (AND formerly W4XA, WA6III and a few others!!)

 

[Tony Langdon]

On 14/2/25 2:15 pm, Francis, ON3BSQ wrote:
> 3804 kHz is outside the 80m band in Region 1.

And Region 3 (at least in VK)
> 1870 kHz is OK

When I checked, this is in the phone segment (bandplan, not legally
mandated), so should be OK.

[Jose Eugenio Maison]

Well Ricky, that's the most sensible thing I've heard so far. I honestly don't see any problem with using the frequencies that are usual for you in digital modes or I totally agree. Each person finds their place, just like with the radio. It was like that for me, as long as the frequency is not occupied by a station, everything is fine.

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[glenn...@gmail.com]

Well sounds like some don’t care about the band plans and what the signals being transmitted are.  Guess we will just have to start using digital “data” all over the voice spectrum since digital is digital.  Amateur radio spectrum has become trashed due to ignorance of right and wrong and poor understanding.  Guess voice everywhere and data everywhere as well.  Good luck finding clear spectrum.

 

If I can figure out how to remove myself I will from this group.  I like the software the developer has created, believe it is more than useful and hope to see it succeed.  But I can not read peoples nonsensical understanding of the rules and regulations or the argument about the FCC needing to change rules and ARRL being nothing. 

 

[Rick, W7IMM]

On Saturday, February 15, 2025 at 1:03:46 PM UTC-8 glenn...@gmail.com wrote:

If I can figure out how to remove myself I will from this group.  I like the software the developer has created, believe it is more than useful and hope to see it succeed.  But I can not read peoples nonsensical understanding of the rules and regulations or the argument about the FCC needing to change rules and ARRL being nothing. 

It's just s simple difference of opinion.  We all have them.  The outdated rules by which (US) Amateur Radio is governed include some that are nearly 100 years old.  It only makes sense that some (or most) of them would change as new technologies are developed and fielded.  

The ARRL didn't really foster the Hobby much by creating incentive licensing.  It only served to create a "Class" system.  The FCC really isn't at fault.  They (for the most part) just do whatever the ARRL wants within the confines of the Communications act of 1934 and international law.

FreeDV is probably the best argument for  bandwidth based amateur band segmenting.  

Arguing over whether or not it's a digital or voice mode (it can be both or neither.....it can also be facsimile or image and all four),    is not really the right "argument" anyway.

If you want to leave this group, simply click on "My Membership Settings" to the left of your screen.

Then click : "  Leave Group"  (in red)

But my vote would be for you to stay in the group.  It's much better when we have all opinions expressed.

73/Rick

W7IMM

[Tony Langdon]

On 16/2/25 9:01 am, Rick, W7IMM wrote:
>

> It's just s simple difference of opinion.  We all have them.  The
> outdated rules by which (US) Amateur Radio is governed include some that
> are nearly 100 years old.  It only makes sense that some (or most) of
> them would change as new technologies are developed and fielded. 

Many other countries have evolved well beyond this.

>
> FreeDV is probably the best argument for  bandwidth based amateur band
> segmenting. 

Using Australia as an example, there is no legally mandated band
segmenting here, other than where absolutely necessary (for sharing with
other services, etc). However, each band does have a bandwidth limit
for all modes (and some HF bands have a power spectral density limit for
emissions wider than the bandwidth limit). From the top half of 6m and
higher, there is no bandwidth limit, other than the band limits themselves.

Segmentation is done on a voluntary basis by the community through the
representative body (in our case, the WIA), which publishes the band
plans, to keep everyone informed. Band plans are regularly updated as
spectrum demands and usage patterns evolve over time. While there's no
legal reason to stick to the band plan, it is generally well followed in
the interests of cooperation and avoiding undue interference to each other.

>
> Arguing over whether or not it's a digital or voice mode (it can be both
> or neither.....it can also be facsimile or image and all four),    is
> not really the right "argument" anyway.

Agree totally, and again, what mode goes where should be organised
through the amateur community, not authorities.

[Mooneer Salem]

OK, I now have the following changes:

1. 1.9970 MHz becomes 1.8700 MHz.

2. 3.8500 MHz becomes 3.8030 MHz.

Note: no other 80 meter frequencies are affected, so the following are still calling frequencies there:

3.6250 MHz

3.6430 MHz

3.6930 MHz

3.6970 MHz

Please see https://github.com/drowe67/freedv-gui/pull/831 for more discussion. Once merged, I'll go ahead and update the FreeDV Reporter list too.

-Mooneer K6AQ

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