Recent info here indicates that no part of the
500 khz will be allocated to Radio Amateurs in the near future. This is
not surprising considering that the marine service is still using the
band.
While tuning around the medium wave band today and
then on my way down to 136 khz the 500 khz band was extremely busy with marine
broadcast traffic lists to ships on 500, 510 and 512 khz
I was also recently on a ship and read the ships
licence conditions and the HF bands were specified on the licence as permitted
for use, plus other vhf frequencies and satellite up/down links.
Certainly all marine fixed and mobile
services(ships) have not gone over to satellite as some sources would make you
believe. The lists today were very long so it would appear that hundreds of
ships are still using HF/MF frequencies for ship/shore.
Maybe someone has more details about frequency
allocations and future plans.
de G3KEV
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