Amateur Radio About to be Primary Across 160 Meters

An FCC decision to elevate the status of amateur radio on 1900-2000 kHz from secondary to primary takes effect on August 6, but with an asterisk. In the course of receiving comments in the rule making proceeding, the Commission learned that commercial fishermen had for years been using offshore buoys operating in this frequency range without FCC authorization. Since there had been virtually no interference complaints, the FCC decided to authorize the buoys rather than force the fishermen to replace them en masse. The top half of 160 had previously been allocated on a primary basis to the radiolocation service, but has not been used for that purpose in many years.