We used a talk-through arrangement a couple of weeks back for the club 2m
Monday net. There was some discussion about it’s position with respect to the
licence.
http://rsgb.org/main/operating/emergency-communications/talk-through-units-guidelines-for-use/
"Ofcom have declared that Talk-Through is now permitted without the need for a
permit to be issued and without the need for the unit to be staffed.” [1]
There is more information at the URL, but the station must be ‘supervised’ by
the licensee, but not necessary ‘staffed’
Cross-band operation is explicitly permitted.
The RSGB have requested usage reports and clearly expect this to be used by
Raynet, but this doesn’t seem to be an Ofcom requirement.
The band plan recommendation is to use the emergency comms channels, but again,
this is not a licence requirement.
I’m happy to move the talk-through to 430.800 with a suitable CTCSS if there is
interest in setting up the trunk again.
I did use the talk-through this morning for the Darenth Valley net and someone
was clearly trying to deliberately interfere on 70 cms, so I’ll go with CTCSS
in the future. Aren’t people lovely?
Note 1: I’m not aware that it was ever not permitted, but the position is now
explicit rather than implicit.
73 Mark G8PHM
