Topband: ARRL re 1817.50

[W2pm at aol.com]

I just got a reply back from ARRL. Looks like no  QSY planned for  160:
 
Pete,

Here is Dave's answer.  It appears that, for the present,  there is no longer 
a plan to move.

73......Frank...N2FF....

Hi  Frank,

Pete isn't quite correct as to what we said when the original QSY  was 
rescinded:

* W1AW 160-meter frequency change put on hold: QRX on that  W1AW QSY! W1AW
has rescinded plans to change its 160-meter CW frequency and  will remain on
1817.5 kHz for the time being. An announced change to 1807.5  kHz was aimed
at reducing the possibility of interfering with DX stations  that have begun
showing up in the vicinity of 1817.5 kHz. "Lately we have  received more
complaints about W1AW interfering with weak DX signals," said  ARRL CEO and
W1AW Trustee David Sumner, K1ZZ. "After what we thought was due  diligence we
decided that it made sense to shift below 1810 kHz, since that  is the lower
band edge in Region 1 and would pretty much eliminate the  conflict with
DXers." Monitoring showed that 1807.5 appeared to be generally  clear.
"Unfortunately," Sumner continued, "we failed to pick up the fact that  PSK31
operators appear to have adopted 1807 kHz as their 160-meter frequency,  and
we don't want to conflict with any established activity centers." Under  a
tight deadline to announce the W1AW operating schedule 30 days in  advance,
the League has called off the frequency shift for now. The question  will be
revisited over the summer.

In general, the feedback I heard  after this announcement was that our 
staying on 1817.5 kHz wasn't that big a  problem once we stopped using the Harris 
transmitter and spent a lot of time  shaping the keying on the TenTec 
transceiver we now use. As you may know, I  operate 160 meters quite a bit and am 17-1/2 
miles from W1AW, so the station is  quite loud. I don't have a problem 
hearing weak DX within 500 Hz of W1AW -- it's  just another loud station, and if 
you're DXing on 160 you have to be able to  cope with loud stations.

So the bottom line is that at this point, we  have not identified a frequency 
that would be significantly better than the one  we're on.

73,
Dave K1ZZ