The ’old’ 5 MHz ZL sub-licence expired fol­low­ing the end of the two-chan­nel 60 m NZ tri­al in 2020. How­ev­er, NZART is pleased to announce that nego­ti­a­tions with reg­u­la­tor RSM have been suc­cess­ful in obtain­ing a licence to allow oper­a­tion for all New Zealand ama­teur oper­a­tors to use in the 60 m (5 MHz) band using the WRC-15 allocation.

Sin­cere thanks are due to Bob Ver­nall, ZL2CA, who did out­stand­ing work by virtue of his posi­tion as an NZ gov­ern­ment Approved Radio Engi­neer and ITU expe­ri­ence with the Inter­na­tion­al Fre­quen­cy Reg­is­tra­tion Board enabled him to put for­ward his project. Bob states:

“I inde­pen­dent­ly liaised with New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) to imple­ment a plan I for­mu­lat­ed in Jan­u­ary to clear a 60 metre band for ama­teur radio. NZDF liked my plan and it has rel­e­vance to oth­er NZDF radio projects. As I’m an Approved Radio Engi­neer I can mod­i­fy radio licences and NZDF autho­rised me to make spec­i­fied changes to their licences, which cleared band­width for ama­teur radio. These changes were reg­is­tered by RSM around mid­day on 8 April. That com­plet­ed my con­tri­bu­tion to devel­op­ment of a 60 metre ama­teur band in New Zealand.”

This made the new WRC-15 Ama­teur 5 MHz Sec­ondary allo­ca­tion clear for the next step which was for NZART to engage with the reg­u­la­tor RSM to for­mu­late a new sub-licence for the band 5351.5 – 5366.5 kHz, Sec­ondary Sta­tus, Max­i­mum Pow­er 15W EIRP, work­ing togeth­er with the IARU 60 m Bandplan.

NZART Pres­i­dent Mark ZL2UFI explains:

“The NZART licence (and your sub-licence) are for a twelve-month peri­od to allow RSM to assess if there are any inter­fer­ence issues. If not, then NZART will nego­ti­ate with RSM to hav­ing the 60 m (5 MHz) band allo­ca­tion added to the GURL (Gen­er­al User Radio Licence). If this nego­ti­a­tion is suc­cess­ful, then the need for the sub-licence will not be required in the future.” 

More infor­ma­tion from the NZART website

https://www.nzart.org.nz/info/60m

ZL 60 m New Sub-Licensees

https://www.nzart.org.nz/info/60m/sub-licence-holders

Paul Gaskell G4MWO

Edi­tor

The 5 MHz Newsletter