The strong radiolocation beacon that suddenly popped up a few days ago on
1948 kHz has moved to 1952.1.
It has been reported with a consistently strong signal throughout eastern N
America from New England and Ontario, to as far west as Colorado, and it is
very strong in the southeast.
Radiolocation is allocated as the primary service on 1900-2000 and amateur
operation is secondary, so the signal is probably legal and nothing can be
done about it.
With the decline in the use of 160m radiolocation due to the advent of GPS,
the radiolocation band from 1700 to 1800 has many vacant frequencies. They
could have put this station there, where radiolocation is allocated
exclusively, rather than on a frequency where they have to share with
amateurs. The 1900-2000 radiolocation allocation was adopted to
"reaccomodate" the beacons originally on 1600-1700 that were displaced by
the expanded AM broadcast band. Most of the beacons that were on the air
back then have long ago gone dark.
Apparently, most of the members of this board are interested primarily in
DX, and probably rarely listen that high in the band, but one thing to be
concerned about is, if this is the beginning of a widespread deployment of
some new radiolocation system that could eventually crowd amateurs off the
top end, then many of the phone stations now active above 1900 will move
down below, increasing the congestion on 1800-1900 as well.
Of course, radiolocation beacons above 1900 kHz are nothing new, and
hopefully this one is an isolated incident.
Don k4kyv
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