Over the period 14^th to 25^th November 2022, the preparatory work for WRC-23 agenda item 9.1b continued in ITU‑R Working Party 5A (WP5A). Two deliverables are under discussion:

1) Draft ITU‑R Report M.[AMATEUR_CHARACTERISTICS] – this reports on the specific 23cm band amateur and amateur satellite service technical parameters and operational characteristics used in the studies now published in ITU‑R Report M.2513 – 0.

2) Draft ITU​.​R Recommendation M.[AS_GUIDANCE] – this will recommend guidance that national administrations can take to facilitate the protection of the radio navigation satellite service from harmful interference from amateur radio stations.

Since the previous WP5A meeting the IARU global WRC23 9.1b team led by G4SJH has been consulting with the amateur community resulting in a contributionto the draft guidance recommendation. As usual, the IARU participated in the meeting to support the contribution and take part in the ongoing discussion and negotiations. Contributions were also provided by a number of national administrations and a summary report of the meetingcan be downloaded.

In general the development of the recommendation is moving in a suitable direction and many of the IARU proposals remain in the draft document that will go forward to the next meeting for further work.

Meanwhile in CEPT the work in project team SE40 continues with their development of an ECC Report on the same coexistence problem and also met during November (3 – 4^th).

The work on this topic will continue throughout next year both in ITU‑R and in the regional telecommunications organisations and the IARU is committed to ensure the studies are properly interpreted and that due account is taken of the realities of amateur operations in this band.

We are very happy that our community is growing and getting bigger every day, but unfortunately, we can’t do it alone anymore and we need help with the organization.

We firmly believe that we will find other youngsters who are not afraid to take the future of HAM radio into their own hands.

If you would like to assist and help us, e​.​g. with social media or IT, please fill out the this formand we will get back to you with more info soon.

Many thanks in advance.

–
73 IARU Region 1 Youth Working Group

The IARUMS Region 1 Newsletter October 2022 is now available.
Click on the link to read it!

The IARUMS Region 1 Newsletter September 2022 is now available.
Click on the link to read it!

During the period 7 – 13 September 2022, the IARU once again participated in the preparatory work for WRC-23 agenda item 9.1b in ITU‑R Working Party 4C (WP4C). The IARU summary report on the WP4C meeting can be found here.

Updated studies were provided by France and new studies were contributed by the Russian Federation (GLONASS), China (COMPASS) and Japan.

The IARU provided a contributionproviding information agreed in WP5A highlighting the low duration of “busy times” for amateur activities in the 23cm band. This information was adopted into the draft report. Whilst the studies confirm the potential for interference to occur into co-frequency RNSS receivers in almost the entire band, all the studies have assumed only static scenarios without any consideration of the geographic distribution and density of amateur transmitters or the temporal aspects of amateur or RNSS operations. Some studies take account of antenna patterns, but many results and conclusions focus only on worst case main beam consideration. The IARU Region 1 has published a commentary document on these aspects available here.

As a result of these studies and the regulatory status of the amateur service allocation, our ability to operate in certain parts of the band and at the power levels allowed today is likely to be constrained if regulators want to protect the RNSS receivers. This discussion will continue in the development of the Guidance Recommendation in ITU‑R WP5A.

WP4C plenary agreed to elevate the document to Draft New Report status and passed it to Study Group 4 (SG4) for adoption. Therefore drafting work is complete.

Study Group 4 met on September 23^rdand adopted the report for publication. IARU is totally engaged in the discussion that will continue in WP5A to ensure that the amateur services can continue to develop in this band and allow all the amateur applications in use today to continue.