Ministry of Defense Meeting

Readers may be interested to know that the first of a series of meetings took place last week between the Radio Society of Great britain and the Ministry of Defense in an attempt to clarify the situation on 70cm.

The meeting was hosted by Ofcom at Riverside House and RSGB delegates included the DCC Chairman Ian Philipps G0RDI, interim RMC Chairman Andrew Barratt G8DOR and myself. General Manager Peter Kirby G0TWW, President Jeff Smith MI0AEX and Sylvia Manco from HQ staff were also in attendance.

As most of you will know, there has been a freeze on new unattended data node and repeater applications on 70cm since February 2002.

This was due to a perceived r.f. interference threat from other services to sensitive UK based MoD installations.
MoD have now said that they wish to work with the Society on a "partnership basis" and they have no wish to deprive the radio amateur service of any of the facilities currently enjoyed, however with the new operating configuration at RAF Fylindales in North Yorkshire due to come on line very shortly, it will be very important for the two sides to work together closely in the coming months.

The installation will commence testing the new configuration in April and the tests are scheduled to last until October 2005. The likely affect, if any, on the radio amateur service during this time is largely unknown, but any cases of interference should be reported to the Society
for onward transmission to MoD. Likewise any interference, if any, caused to Fylindales will be noted by MoD and passed back to the Society. The channels for handling interference reports within the Society are yet to be decided.

VHF/UHF field-day should be an interesting time. MoD have requested that we do not operate from the North Yorkshire moors, but this is not within our remit and one weekend during the testing period should provide some interesting figures.

Please make those members of your groups that use 70cm aware of the above. More information will be published in Radcom, GB2RS and on the Society website as and when known.

It should be noted that the radio amateur service is not the only service to be affected as the spectrum affected spreads from 420-450MHz and other MoD installations are themselves affected, as will be PMR users.

73 - Colin J. Thomas, G3PSM

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