60m or 5MHz and all that Jazz

Well,

Lat time you may recall that I mentioned I had constructed two new wire antennas; one for 40/30M and one for 80/60M.

60M or 5MHz is a new (ish) allocation in the UK and I had to think carefully how to make sure I stick to the frequency allocation. We have a bunch of 'bandlets' and we are not allowed to transmit outside these frequencies.

So, looking at my newfangled IC-7610, I can see that is has a feature whereby you can configure user band edges and also set up the radio so the TX is inhibited outside these ranges.

To turn on this feature, we enable "Band Edge Beep" to be "On (USER) & TX Limit" as below:


Once that feature is switched on, you can then select an option "User Band Edge" and enter new band edges for the radio to use:




So in the images above you will see that the item numbers 4 to 13 are the UK allocations (note I have subtracted the SSB bandwidth from the upper frequencies in the SSB segments).

So now, as you tune through the band, the TX is enabled in the bits we are OK to TX and disabled where we aren't:



So above you can see the line round the TX is solid at 5.262 MHz meaning the radio will TX, but at 5.258 (which is below the bandlet) it's a dotted surround meaning TX is disabled.

I've stuck my radio config file here if you want to download it. In the latest firmware you can even just import the band edge settings without bringing in all my other config if needed.

Most excellent - well thought out Icom.