[HCDX] India - Thanks to AIR, 'rag chewing' has become clamorous affair for ham operators

["Mike Terry" <miketerry73@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Friday April 29
Kerala

The All India Radio (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. 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.

"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.

http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IER20050428111932&Page=R&Title=Kerala&Topic=0



---[Start Commercial]---------------------

World Radio TV Handbook 2005 is coming out. Preorder yours and support open communications for DXers:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0823077942/hardcoredxcom

---[End Commercial]-----------------------
________________________________________
Hard-Core-DX mailing list
Hard-Core-DX@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://dallas.hard-core-dx.com/mailman/listinfo/hard-core-dx
http://www.hard-core-dx.com/
_______________________________________________

THE INFORMATION IN THIS ARTICLE IS FREE. It may be copied, distributed
and/or modified under the conditions set down in the Design Science License
published by Michael Stutz at http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt