First 5 MHz licences issued to EI stations

Good news at last. After a long process of contacts between the military authorities and Ireland's regulator ComReg, the first of the 5 MHz licences were issued to EI stations on Friday, October 17th.

The Irish Radio Transmitters Society said:
"We hope by now that all of those who applied have received the necessary permission. The permission varies the terms and conditions of the licences concerned so as to include three 3 kHz channels with centre frequencies of 5280, 5400 and 5405 kHz.

"The practice is to use Upper Sideband for voice transmissions on these channels. As these are centre
channel frequencies and the actual dial readout on upper sideband is 5278.5, 5398.5 and 5403,5 kHz respectively i.e. 1.5 kHz on the low frequency side of the centre of the channel. The maximum power allowed is 200 watts.
CW stations are encouraged to use the bottom 300 Hz of the channels as this permits the use of the channel for SSB at the same time.

"It should be noted that military cadet stations in the UK which use special non amateur call signs are allowed to participate in the 5 MHz experiment in the UK. EI stations with 5 MHz permissions can not communicate with these stations and may only communicate with other licensed experimenter or amateur stations."

Dave EI3IO was one of the first EI’s on the band and has sent IRTS some observations. He indicates that 5 MHz with its near optimum Near Vertical Incidence Skywave (NVIS) properties provides superb and stable communication during daylight hours around the Western European Isles of EI, G, GI, GW and GM. At night, stations in North America on the East Coast and the Mid West were easily workable.

After 48 hours with the 5 MHz permission Dave worked 12 DXCC countries including Bermuda, Greenland and Puerto Rico. In all he had 82 QSO’s in that period with the best DX being K5RK in Alvin Texas at 7189 kilometres. Other EI’s heard on the band were EI7CD, EI6IZ and EI7CC.

Finally, IRTS offers a word of thanks to ComReg and to the primary spectrum user for facilitating the release of the three channels at 5 MHz for experimentation

Source: IRTS