Looming Part 97 problems

[radioinstl]

No i get that, but remember alot of customers get a free firmware refresh as part of a flat rate or other depot service, and if you are a part 90 customer post sunset date, what leg will you have to stand on to not have your radio narrowbanded? Your infrastructure should already be narrowbanded, so i doubt many part 90 customers will care. What will remain to be seen is if they will make an exception for amateurs.

I would imagine unless you have an STA from the FCC and they can validate it, they are going to say they have to make your radio compliant as part of the narrowbanding mandate.

This has nothing to do with license or STA. The LAW says that equipment MANAFACTURED or SOLD after the deadline must be narrowbanded. If it was made or sold before the deadline there is no requirement, PERIOD! No requirement to have a wide license, STA etc. The only "leg" you need to stand on is your radio was sold or made before the deadline.

[ASTROMODAT]

Sadly, I doubt that M will go to the time and trouble to "protect" a ham's radio that's in the depot for repair. Once there, I would guess (and it's ONLY a guess!) that it will fall vicitm to NB, after whatever date certain. Not that many hams are sending radios to the depot for repair, so this may be a moot point, anyway.

[N4DES]

This was sent to me yesterday by a Motorola employee when I posted the question on another board:

Mark,

You are correct when you say that only radios with the Q/G507 option will be impacted.

I believe we will be posting a more detailed document to the Lifecycle Managmeent portion of the MTUG server that gives a bit more detail....

The main take away is, nothing has changed. You have full programmability of your radios (old or new) with the new CPS software for both the XTS/XTL and APX radios. The CPS message indicates that this version of CPS has been updated so that when new certified radios get launched in mid/late 2011, the CPS will enforce the FCC mandate to limit 25kHz operation in specific portions of the VHF/UHF bands for radios that receive FCC certification after Dec 31 '10.

Hope that clears up any confusion. Let us know if you have more questions.

There was also a link sent that said this:

Note: Even when this mandate is in effect, there are still frequencies in VHF that are allowed to operate at 25 kHz. The VHF services that are not subject to part 90 narrowband include the part 80 marine frequencies, part 97 amateur frequencies, and the NOAA weather channels.

So looks like we can continue doing the firmware upgrades to the ASTRO25 and APX radios without any affects at all to the VHF spectrum noted above, but unknown as to what the affects to Part 97 UHF will be at this time. I will request a clarification.

[escomm]

Just for grins and giggles be sure to include Part 74 broadcast operations, too, though I doubt many news stations will be shelling out $$ for APX radios

[ASTROMODAT]

Thanks so much for sharing, Mark!

I agree with you that VHF 2M Ham use defintely looks like smooth sailing, but the narrowband issues around the 440 Ham band remain very unclear in terms of what Motorola's narrowband policy might be (from their internal business strategy standpoint). It will be nice to see if he might be able to address the UHF Ham issue, especially as it relates to their newer APX radios. The FCC's narrowband policy is crystal clear, but the question is how Motorola will respond. I can see if it is any sort of an incremental cost impact for Motorola to dick around with reserving Ham portions of the UHF band for wideband, they may just asune glom the Ham 440 freqs in with the rest (e.g., narrowband them). With VHF, it's got the momentum of Marine, etc. so Motorola has to deal with this anyways. It may not necessarily be the same business decision for Motorola on UHF.

We'll just have to wait and see, but it will be nice to see if this gentleman can shed some light on Motorola's expected business policy decision on how they intend to handle the 440 MHz Ham segment of the UHF band.

[com501]

I intend to handle it by making sure that every single repeater I own or install for my friends will be programmable and narrowband compliant. As soon as I get one use who has a problem with their whatever radio and wide band, I will give the other users of the repeater 90 days to get narrow before I make the repeater narrow.

Any new repeaters I put up after 1/1/2013 will automatically be either digital or narrow, or (in the case of Quantars and Trbo) mixed mode.

Time to get with technology, people. Radios that program with DOS, crystal sets, and radios that don't narrow band is OLD technology.

Whatever happened to ham radio being the driving force behind technical changes in industry? Are we all appliance users now?

If you want wide band, build a SDR spread spectrum unit and play with that technology...

[N4DES]

Update:

Mark,

You are correct. The document that we be loading specifies...

After the FCC mandate takes affect, specific frequencies in VHF and UHF will be allowed to operate at 25 kHz. Examples of VHF and UHF services that are not subject to Part 90 narrowband include: Part 80 marine frequencies, Part 87 aviation frequencies, Part 95, FRS/GMRS and MURS, Part 97 amateur frequencies, and NOAA weather channels