Can I ask that for VK, all default mode switching per frequency changes be removed? In VK we do not have a need for this at all.
It will be a real annoyance.
@VK1AO ,
Interesting use case in VK land.
Living in Canada myself, I’d be interested in the ability to define each of the bands and the suggested boundaries between modes.
Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) publishes a PDF of its band plan that can varry partially or signifigantly compared to other countries.
It would be nice to have the ability of uploading either directly or by way of URL, a custom band plan. Ideally a standard machine readable band plan would be publised through the various national bodies including ARRL and RAC.
RAC 0-30MHz band plan:
https://www.rac.ca/rac-0-30-mhz-band-plan/
Dave,
Polo already has a customisable band plan. PoLo will then select the mode appropriate to your frequency when you QSY. e.g. US bandplan for 30m is CW only but VK allows SSB so defaulting to CW when I QSY on 30m has been removed. I’d like the remove all the default changes for VK.
You can see the plan setup and used by PoLo here. If you see something you need to change for Canada, you should alert us to it. lib-operation-data/src/data/bandPlans.json at main · ham2k/lib-operation-data · GitHub
Thanks for the ref to the default band plans @VK1AO ,
First I’d add the following source for Canada’s 0-30MHz section
“sources”: [
{ “url”: “Band Plans | International Amateur Radio Union (IARU)” },
{ “url”: “Band Plan” },
{ “url”: “Updated ARRL Amateur Radio Frequency Charts Now Available” },
{ “url”: “https://www.rac.ca/operating/bandplans/” },
{ “url”: “https://www.rac.ca/mivahih/2023/06/RAC_Bandplan_0–30_MHz.pdf” }
],
I will just focus on the 80m band here for an example
The current band plan listed, assuming based on AARL is:
“80m”: {
“mhz”: [3500, 3800],
“segments”: [
{ “name”: “CW”, “mhz”: [3500, 3600], “mode”: “CW” },
{ “name”: “Phone”, “mhz”: [3535, 3800], “mode”: “SSB”, “submode”: “LSB”, “regions”: [ 3 ] },
{ “name”: “FT8”, “mhz”: [3568, 3571], “mode”: “FT8”, “regions”: [ 3 ] },
{ “name”: “Data”, “mhz”: [3570, 3600], “mode”: “RTTY” },
{ “name”: “FT8”, “mhz”: [3573, 3576], “mode”: “FT8” },
{ “name”: “Phone”, “mhz”: [3600, 4000], “mode”: “SSB”, “submode”: “LSB” }
]
},
A Canada Specific one might look like the following:
“80m”: {
“mhz”: [3500, 4000],
“segments”: [
{ “name”: “CW”, “mhz”: [3500, 3580], “mode”: "CW },
{ “name”: “Data”, “mhz”: [3580, 3583], “mode”: “Data” },
{ “name”: “CW”, “mhz”: [3583, 3589], “mode”: “CW” },
{ “name”: “Data”, “mhz”: [3589, 3600], “mode”: “Data” },
{ “name”: “Phone”, “mhz”: [3600, 3842], “mode”: “SSB”, “submode”: “LSB”, “regions”: [ 3 ] },
{ “name”: “TV”, “mhz”: [3842, 3845], “mode”: “TV”, “regions”: [ 3 ] },
{ “name”: “Phone”, “mhz”: [3845, 4000], “mode”: “SSB”, “submode”: “LSB”, “regions”: [ 3 ] }
]
},
Is the “regions” parameter the ITU region? (source?) or the CQ Zones (Canada falls into 1, 2 , 3, 4 and 5. Is this how you differentiate what would apply in VK land?
Anyhow, not sure exactly how I can help with further defining the differences in the Canadian band plan. But I am willing to learn if I can be of use and if custom band plans is a a current or desired feature.
I would actually think the ideal approach to all this would be to just federate the band plan definitions. So for example RAC would maintain a machine readable version of the band plan at something like https://rac.ca/bandplan.json and then this file could be reffed in robots.txt .
It may be a big ask to get all national orgs to agree on a common standard, and perhaps Polo would be the reference implementation. Without going to deep in the rabit hole, I am not sure if JSON would be the best candidate, perhaps something a bit more semantic like RDF (RDF - Semantic Web Standards), and of course the general schema should follow Schema.org, which appears to have the BroadcastFrequencySpecification (BroadcastFrequencySpecification - Schema.org Type) which before being licensed I don’t think I knew existed. Gotta love learning new things.
Anyhow, back to band plans.
How can I help?
Thanks @Dave. I’ve created a separate topic here on band plans to keep this thread focussed on @VK1AO’s issue.
Do you think the feature of guessing modes should just be toggleable in settings? Just wondering if given people option of turning if off may be better in case band plan is wrong for their region, or equally they don’t like using it.
Is there no rough band plan for VK at all? Could easily add same change that was done for 30m for rest of the bands if so?
If options were there, we’d all turn the plan off here in VK. Unlike other jurisdictions, the ACMA here only allocates bands/frequency boundaries. The WIA which is one of 2 bodies claiming to represent amateur radio operators, has, for some time provided a plan which is ONLY a suggestion. It is followed in the most part but is NOT binding in any way. The only guiding principal we must adhere to is to not interfere. So we can go anywhere and operate any mode under this principal.
So having a logging app switch us to a different mode when we QSY is only an annoyance and something we would need to correct every time.
Under the setup we have in PoLo, we would want this equivalent line to have effect on every band:
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [10100, 10150], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
we don’t have 60m but 160 down would be
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [1800, 1875], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [3500, 3800], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [1800, 1875], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [7000, 7300], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [1800, 1875], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [10100, 10150], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [14000, 14350], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [18068, 18168], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [10100, 10150], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [21000, 21450], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [10100, 10150], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [24890, 24990], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [10100, 10150], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [28000, 29700], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
The WIA band plan is published here:
https://www.wia.org.au/members/bandplans/data/
And I suppose 6m would be
{ “name”: “Australia”, “mhz”: [50000, 54000], “mode”: null, “countries”: [“au”] }
Operators make there own choices otherwise.
Yeah, it’s the same in UK. Band plan is recommendation only (some exceptions for 60m/30m/…), as license in theory lets you use any mode on allowed bands. Would it still not be useful to have mode switching if people follow in the most part? But ability to turn off for those that don’t want the feature.
I’ve created a PR for the changes you propose.
definitely - no probs with the preference setting. I know most of my colleagues would ask me straight away how to turn it off and I’d field a lot of FB posts about it being annoying until I explain how to turn it off. 
Alan
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Thanks appreciate that
Alan
Something to consider about a setting to disable guessing is that even if we ignore it for your own frequency changes, we can still use it to guess the right mode for DX spots that did not include a mode.
I’d like to try to fine tune the band plan data first, before giving up on the idea. And this includes making the whole plan “modeless” for VK.
Maybe we need to figure out a way to represent “optional but likely modes” for cases like this, and make that a setting.