RAC announces a newly revised HF Band Plan

I.C.P.O. (Islands, Castles & Portable Operations)
UPDATE

RAC announces a newly revised HF Band Plan.

The HF band plan presently in use in Canada has been adopted in 1996. Since, many changes have happened in the Amateur world and other band plans have been revised and modified. Let us only mention the changes announced by the FCC in 2007 affecting the US band plan and the revised one adopted by the IARU Region 2 countries at the Brasilia conference in September 2007.

Just under two years ago, Radio Amateurs of Canada had asked Bob Nash, VE3KZ, a former First Vice President of RAC, to re-activate the HFBPC (HF Band Planning Committee) with a goal to review and modernize the Canadian HF Band Plan. Bob's committee has since worked very hard in studying and consulting all across Canada to eventually come up with a band plan proposed to the Board of Directors of Radio Amateurs of Canada. The RAC Board has adopted this plan at its July 2008 meeting and the new band plan is now on the RAC Web page at:

http://www.rac.ca/service/bandplans/hfband_e.php

RAC wants to thank the HFBPC members for their hard work and wishes the Canadian Amateur community much pleasure in using the new band plans.

Please spread the news.
73,
Daniel A. Lamoureux, VE2KA
Vice President International Affairs,
Radio Amateurs of Canada.
ve2ka@rac.ca [RAC Bulletin]

73 and Good DX!
Dave Raycroft - VA3RJ
Home of ICPO: http://webhome.idirect.com/~va3rj/
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Belarus government continues to hamper Radio Racyja

Reporters Without Borders has condemned the Belarusian foreign ministry’s refusal on 28 May to issue accreditation to reporter Alyaksey Minchonak of Radio Racyja, a station based in the Polish city of Bialystok that broadcasts to Belarus. This latest obstacle for the station comes a month after the police raided its Minsk bureau and seized equipment.
“The authorities are continuing to harass Radio Racyja, one of the few independent news outlets in Belarus,” the press freedom organisation said. “We call for an end to this administrative persecution, which is motivated solely by political considerations.”
Minchonak was summoned to the foreign ministry on 28 May and was told his request for accreditation had been turned down on the grounds that he had already begun to work without permission.
The decision was “absurd,” Minchonak told Reporters Without Borders. “One the one hand, the foreign ministry targets us for working without accreditation, while on the other hand it continues to refuse our requests.”
The police still have not returned the five computers and other equipment they seized in the raid on Radio Racyja’s Minsk bureau a month ago. The pretext for the raid was the station’s alleged role in creating animated cartoons posted on the Internet in 2005, which were deemed to have insulted President Alexandre Lukashenko.
Radio Racyja was launched in 1999 by the Polish government and the Dutch embassy in Warsaw. Its repeated requests for accreditation in Belarus have always been rejected by the foreign ministry. It broadcasts from Poland and has a network of correspondents in Belarus who work without accreditation. It often criticises the government, unlike Belarus’ own state-controlled radio stations.
(Source: Reporters Without Borders/R Netherlands Media Network)