Gentlemen - I have been happily overwhelmed with numerous responses to my
inquiry. Many thanks to all of you who took the time to send links and
valuable hints & kinks. I have no idea of our 600m timeline here but things
seem to be moving faster than I had anticipated and RAC is pushing hard for
our cause with Industry Canada. Hopefully we could be operational later this
year but this is just a wishful guess at the moment.
I will begin construction shortly on something basic that will give me
around 100W for starters and then begin transverter construction in order to
run some fsk modes. Our experimental licences will be geared towards
fleshing out 600m for regional emergency networks reliability over various
paths and conditions. It is also looking as if we will be able to work other
stations within the amateur service, either directly on 600m or via
crossband but nothing has yet been written in stone.

Thanks all again for the flood of good information.

73 - Steve / VE7SL

Web: "THE VE7SL RADIO NOTEBOOK" at   http://www.imagenisp.ca/jsm