Figuring out the Master Band Plan

Now that I've started to go digital, one of the key things is to figure out the digital band plan. I have plans to eventually do something really neat with this, but here's a rough idea of what the band plan is for Digital modes. I'm going to focus on 20m, as most of them are similar to it, and include the links for the other information.

At the highest level is the FCC rules:

14.000-14.150 MHz- Digital Modes (CW included)
14.150-14.350 MHz- Analog Modes (SSB included)

The next level seems to be the ARRL band plans, which are actually quite complete for VHF+, but seem to lack a bit in the details for HF bands:

20 Meters (14.0-14.35 MHz)

14.070-14.095	RTTY
14.095-14.0995	Packet
14.100	NCDXF Beacons
14.1005-14.112	Packet
14.230	SSTV
14.286	AM calling frequency

The next level down is CIARC, which provides some really good detailed information on digital modes, but is still a bit lacking.

Mode	Specific	Dial Freq	Center Freq	Offset
PSK31		14.07	14.07015
Olivia	Olivia 16/500	14.073.65	14.0744	750
Olivia	Olivia 32/1000	14.1055	14.1065	1000
JT65		14.076
Olivia	Olivia 16/500	14.07765	14.0784
Olivia	Olivia 32/1000	14.1055	14.1065
Olivia	Olivia 32/1000	14.1065	14.1075

The ultimate band plan seems to be bandplan.com, but this has a bit too much detail, including nets, etc.

I'm going to put together a master band plan, that includes everything I can find, and piece it together here. Hopefully it will be of some use to the community out there!

Working JT9/JT65

In my working with digital modes, I have started with JT9/JT65. I've found them to be rather relaxing modes, you can easily do something else while you are talking, and just get back to the conversation every two minutes. I'm hoping to give a bit of an idea of how these two modes work, and what should be done to improve communications on the subject.

The Digital Leap

I've been slowly noticing more and more my limitations of being able to get those rare DX stations attention, and noticing RFI issues. I was convinced to give digital amateur radio a shot recently, and had a good collection of notes from my efforts to go digital.