The ARRL recently posted a news story, noting that amateurs can now operate the 630-meter band (472-479 kHz) and the 2200-meter band (135.7-137.8 kHz). There is one catch, however. Before beginning to transmit, you must fill out a form on the Utilities Technology Council (UTC) website and wait up to 30 days for UTC to respond. The form asks for the latitude and longitude of your transmitting antenna.
The reason for submitting this information is that operations are not allowed within 1 kilometer of Power Line Carrier (PLC) systems operating on the same or overlapping frequencies. This is to prevent amateur radio stations from causing harmful interference to the PLC systems, which are used to control the power grid. Presumably, UTC will check data submitted and then give those applying a thumbs up or a thumbs down. They have up to 30 days to do this. If an amateur has not heard back from UTC within 30 days, they can legally begin transmitting.
This news has generated a bit of activity on our club mailing list. One fellow noted that his WSPRLite will transmit on 630m, but that he would need a lowpass filter for it. Another commented:
For transmitting, at least for CW, I was thinking of using an Si5351 clock generator board like this one. It should be easy to program to any desired frequency with an Arduino. Maybe, I’ll add a power MOSFET to get to maximum legal power. You’d definitely need to add a lowpass to clean off harmonics, since I would expect a square wave with fierce odd harmonics. As for an antenna, I don’t know, perhaps a random wire, the longer the better???
Just for kicks, I did a bit of googling and came up with the following resources:
- 472 kHz.org. This site is the brainchild of Rik ON7YD/OR7T. It has a nice “getting started” page, a collection of links to a bunch of other sites with information on operating 630m .
- 500kc.com. This is the web page of the ARRL 600m experimental group.
- W0YSE’s 600m page.
- Commercial gear. It looks like a company in Australia—Monitor Sensors—is selling a commercial transverter for both 630m and 2200m. Price and availability is uncertain, though. The webpage says to email them for price and delivery costs.
- The Transatlantic on 2200 Meters. This article from the July 2005 QST has a design for a 2200 meter band rig.
I submitted the form, but not sure that I’ll ever get on the band. I did, however, purchase a kit to make the PA0RDT mini-whip antenna a couple of months ago. Perhaps my first steps should be to get this built, so I can at least receive on those frequencies.