Thanks to AIR, ‘rag chewing’ has become clamorous affair for ham operatorsFriday April 29 2005 00:00 IST
KOCHI: For hams, ‘rag chewing’ (conversing) in ham radios has become a clamorous affair thanks to the Thiruvananthapuram All India Radio (AIR) station.
The station is transmitting errant and spurious signals, thereby hampering and interrupting exclusive frequencies of ham radio operators in the country. The noise has forced several ham amateurs in India to pull down the big switch.
The AIR Thiruvananthapuram station, which is authorised to use 5010 and 7290 khz in the 60 and 41-metre band respectively for its domestic Malayalam service, regularly trespasses into the ham frequencies band, which is segmented between 7000 and 7100 khz.
“Several ham radio frequency bandwidths are affected as a result of the spurious emission. It causes extreme interference to our radio communication and we have changed several of our ham net programmes to other bandwidths and different time schedule,” said Manohar Arasu, monitoring systems co-ordinator of Amateur Radio Society of India (ARSI), who goes by the call sign VU2UR.
The corrupted bandwidths located till now are 7002, 7026, 7050, 7074, 7098 khz. There are also unwanted emissions on bands 7121, 7314 and 7362 khz, which do not belong to the hams.
“These bandwidths can even belong to radio services used for aviation communication, navigation, telephone services etc. The overpowering signals from the AIR station just elbow-in and interrupt our audio. This may not cost much for ham radios, but radio signals for aviation and navigation, if mangled, will lead to a disaster,” said P.B.Sam Kumar, who has a call sign VU3MGU.
As per the rules charted in the International Radio Regulations, it is clearly stated that no unwanted emission should be allowed to trespass into the frequency allotted to ham operators. If any such cases arise, it should be rectified as early as possible, or the transmission must be stopped.
“We had sent letters to Thiruvananthapuram AIR station for restricting their emissions. But nothing has been done so far. Their spectrum analyser showed no harmonics (a type of emission) was their reply. But in the first place, I had never told them of any harmonics at all. AIR is violating the rules framed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU)”, said Manohar Arasu.
Top officials at the AIR Station, Thiruvananthapuram, are willing to solve the problem, provided the ham club co-operate. But the broadcast major has been ham-fisted in locating the erring line. The department has not changed its working frequency for several years.“We had even summoned the Wireless & Planning Commission (WPC) in vain, to detect the emission. We are willing to hold discussion with members of the ham clubs regarding this. If worked together we will be able to find a permanent solution to the whole problem,” said AIR-Thiruvananthapuram station engineer K.V.Ramachandran.
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