ATHENS HOSTS B06 HFCC/ASBU CONFERENCE

     by Jeff White, NASB President

The B06 season High Frequency Coordinating Conference (HFCC) was sponsored by ERT (the Greek Radio and Television), and it was officially opened on Monday morning, August 28, by Mr. Panos Leivados, the Greek Secretary General for Information; Mr. Michalis Portokalis, General Director of ERT; and Ms. Gina Siriuli, Director of the external service Voice of Greece.  The real workhorses of the conference were Sotiris Vorgias and Babis Charalambopoulos of the Voice of Greece, who worked hard to make every delegate feel welcome and to resolve all of their problems (like the piece of our luggage which was lost by the airline).  As usual, this was a joint conference with the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU). 

The conference hotel was the Divani Apollon Palace, which must have been the most expensive conference hotel in the history of the HFCC, but its seaside location, views of the Mediterranean, beach and swimming pools were unmatched.  (If only we would have had time to take advantage of them!)  We could literally look out the windows of the main meeting room and see the calm waters of the Mediterranean lapping against the shores of Vouliagmeni, which is the name of this exclusive area of what's known as the "Athenian Riviera" in the suburbs of Athens. 

At this HFCC/ASBU Conference, there were no talks or speeches at the end of the day each day, as has often been done in the past.  This allowed a bit more time for coordination activities.  The coordination did end an hour early on Wednesday afternoon to make time for a group sightseeing tour of Athens by bus.  During this city tour in the center of Athens we had the opportunity to see among other things the Temple of Zeus, the Arch of the Roman emperor Hadrian, the 69,000-seat marble stadium where the first modern Olympics were held, and finally an excursion to the famed Acropolis.  We ascended the rock of the Acropolis from the south slope, passing by the ancient Theatre of Dionysus and the Roman Odeon of Herodes Atticus.  Most participants stayed in the old town area of Athens after the Acropolis visit to do some shopping or have dinner in one of the many outdoor restaurants in the historical Plaka area.

But back to the conference.  When I arrived in Athens on Sunday night, I had dinner with Allen Graham of HCJB.  Among other things, we discussed the monthly Voice of the NASB reports that he has been transmitting on his program "DX Party Line" for over a year now.  Recently, the DX Party Line was reduced from 30 minutes to 15 minutes per week.  However, Allen has continued to give us space for a regular NASB report on the third Saturday of each month.  In addition, he has been including frequent NASB news on his Spanish-language DX program, "Aventura DXista," which is also a 15-minute weekly program.  We recorded a couple of interviews in English and Spanish which will also be used on coming editions of the programs. 

Incidentally, Allen explained that the HCJB Board is close to making a decision about the future of their transmitter site in Pifo, on the outskirts of Quito.  It will need to be dismantled in the near future to make room for the new Quito airport, so HCJB needs to decide if it will be rebuilt in a smaller version elsewhere in the area, rebuilt in cooperation with some other shortwave broadcasting organization, or closed altogether.  One of the options being considered is not rebuilding the Pifo site, but renting airtime from other transmitting stations to reach the Latin American audience.

Regarding the NASB's plans to possibly resume a weekly Voice of the NASB broadcast in DRM in the near future, I met with representatives of various broadcasters which are currently transmitting in DRM.  We have several options to consider if we decide to resume these broadcasts.  In the past, the NASB has broadcast its weekly DRM programs to Europe from VT Merlin's facilities in the UK, and to North America from CBC/Radio Canada International in Sackville.  

During the conference I met with Kathy Otto of Sentech in South Africa and a new participant from Sentech named Ruben Munyai.  They are not doing any DRM broadcasts at the present time, but any new transmitters will probably be equipped for DRM.  Their attitude at the moment is "wait and see."  Sentech sells blocks of airtime to various international broadcasters for transmissions to Africa, and has additional airtime available.  Ludo Maes of NASB associate member TDP asked me about the level of interest in DRM in the United States.  He said he is getting a little more response now to his weekly DRM transmission via CBC Sackville, and he is planning to expand his TDP DRM transmissions in the near future.

Together with Kevin Chambers and Jeff Jaworski of NASB member KNLS, I met with HFCC Chairman Oldrich Cip regarding the possibility of establishing an FMO (Frequency Management Organization code) for World Christian Broadcasting for their new facility in Madagascar.  Oldrich indicated that the frequency requirements for KNLS in Alaska will always have to go through the FCC, but an FMO for the Madagascar facility can be created quite easily at the appropriate time for those requirements.  Other NASB members have similar situations (like TWR with Guam, for example).  The new station in Madagascar, to be known as Madagascar World Voice, could be on the air as early as the end of 2009.

Oldrich Cip indicated that there is a growing interest among stations and organizations that do not actually conduct coordination but are interested in the technical aspects of shortwave broadcasting and/or in the coordination process by having their programs transmitted over frequencies in the HFCC global database for example.  Therefore, the HFCC/ASBU Steering Board is in fact considering an amendment to the present Articles of Association that would broaden the membership rules.

Unfortunately, my suitcase with brochures from NASB and various member stations who sent items for the conference was lost by the airline, and did not arrive until Wednesday.  However, there was still time to distribute these materials on Thursday and Friday.  Prior to that, we made photocopies of the basic NASB brochure and placed them at the NASB exhibit.  The exhibit itself did make it to Athens with me, so we set it up on Monday on a table next to the individual mailboxes for each group.  The NASB was the only organization to have our own exhibit at the conference, and it attracted many positive comments. 

Lunch on Monday and Tuesday of the conference was sponsored by ERT at the Hotel Divani's scenic "Mythos of the Sea" restaurant at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea.  Monday's menu, for example, featured smoked fish with cucumber salad and mint, veal ragout with mashed smoked eggplant, and tiramisu for dessert.  On Tuesday I had lunch with Burkhard Beyer from T-Systems and Ludo Maes of TDP.  Burkhard is the chairman of the German DRM Platform.  He explained, as explained elsewhere in this Newsletter, that due to the results of a recent public tender, many of Deutsche Welle's transmissions will be moving from T-Systems transmitters in Germany to Merlin (now VT Communications) transmitters in the UK in the near future.

My wife Thais, NASB's Assistant Secretary-Treasurer, decided to use her remaining frequent flyer miles to go to the meeting with me.  She helped me make the best use of the limited time available to do many things.  While I was doing one thing or meeting with someone, she was doing something else or meeting with someone else.  I must admit that I did little actual frequency coordination work during this conference, as opposed to past HFCC's that I have attended.  This is partly because we had a quite large FCC/NASB delegation this time -- Tom Lucey of the FCC, George Ross and Jeff Lecureux of KTWR, Kevin Chambers and Jeff Jaworski from KNLS, Glen Tapley of WEWN, and Thais and myself from WRMI.  In fact, the organizers had to create extra table space (which I jokingly referred to as the "FCC annex") for us all.  I did send memos to all member stations before the conference advising them that I would be attending on behalf of NASB and inviting them to send me their schedules, collisions, etc.  A few did so, and some also sent program schedules and other giveaways for the NASB exhibit.

But most of my time at this conference was spent on public relations matters for NASB.  I had a number of talks and meetings with both Oldrich Cip (HFCC Chairman) and Horst Scholz (Vice Chairman).  The NASB was a member of the HFCC Steering Board for the meetings just prior to, during and just after the A05 conference in Mexico City which we hosted.  Over the past few years, we have developed an excellent relationship with all of the HFCC Steering Board, including Jan Willem Drexhage of Radio Netherlands, Geoff Spells of Merlin (who has taken over Dennis Thompson's position as HFCC Rapporteur), and Bassil Zoubi and Mahmoud Al Rheda of the ASBU (Arab States Broadcasting Union).  Bassil and Mahmoud made a special point to invite us to attend the A07 HFCC Conference next February, which will be held in either Dubai or Abu Dhabi (United Arab Emirates).  And there appears to be some reason to hope that it might be possible to host an HFCC Conference in the United States (for the first time in the organization's history) in the not-too-distant future. 

I was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who came up to us and thanked us for the "excellent" HFCC Conference which NASB hosted in February of last year in Mexico City.  A member of the Russian delegation was one of the first to do so.  She remarked about the wonderful time she had at that conference, and on the trip to Acapulco which we organized afterwards.  Throughout the week, people continued to make similar remarks to us.  So it seems that we made quite an impact at the Mexico City conference. 

On Wednesday, the delegates from Spain suggested to us that we consider organizing a regional coordination meeting for Latin American and Caribbean shortwave stations perhaps annually.  The NASB has been gathering frequency requirements for certain Latin American shortwave stations on an informal basis for the past few years now, and submitting this information to HFCC Secretary Vladislav Cip for inclusion in the HFCC master database prior to each conference.  This has been somewhat successful, but it has been difficult to get the advance frequency information out of some of the major Latin American broadcasters, and this has been a source of frustration for many stations broadcasting to this part of the world.  Countries with major shortwave broadcasters like Cuba, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico do not regularly submit their frequency plans, so they do not show up on the HFCC lists.  Then other stations use some of the same or adjacent frequencies unknowingly, causing collisions that cannot be resolved until after they occur.  As the Spaniards said, it makes no sense to spend so much money on shortwave transmissions, only to have them impossible to hear because of interference from stations that don't participate in the frequency coordination process.

Of course one of the major reasons these Latin American stations don't participate is that the meetings are usually held in the eastern hemisphere, and are therefore very expensive for them to attend.  The Spaniards suggested that a regional coordination meeting once a year in Latin America could be more affordable for many of these stations, and that it might be possible to get assistance from the ITU for the organization of such regional meetings, as this is consistent with the ITU's desire to foster regional coordination in developing countries. 

Such regional meetings would also be of great benefit to shortwave stations in North America, as we are the ones most likely to be victims of interference from uncoordinated broadcasts from other parts of this hemisphere.  The delegates from HCJB in Ecuador and Christian Vision (CVC) in Chile expressed their strong interest in the idea of a regional coordination meeting, and HCJB  offered to consider hosting the first such meeting in Quito perhaps in June of next year. 

On another matter, I spoke with Tom Lucey of the FCC International Bureau about the famous letter from the NTIA on behalf of FEMA which threatened our use of out-of-band frequencies.  Specifically, they asked the FCC to make U.S. private SW stations vacate a laundry list of frequencies and the space on 13 kHz on either side of them.   The NTIA "seems to have other priorities right now" said Tom, and they are not pursuing the matter, so the FCC is not pushing it either.  The FCC's policy at the moment is to go ahead authorizing use of the specified OOB frequencies by the private SW stations, but with a proviso that this privilege could be discontinued in the future if other government agencies require them.

I also asked Tom to confirm exactly what U.S. SW stations would need to do to request DRM transmissions.  He said that it is not necessary to submit any new technical requests (i.e. no new applications) to broadcast in DRM; stations need only indicate DRM mode in their frequency requests.  So the door is wide open for DRM broadcasts from U.S. SW stations whenever they want to begin.

I also had an opportunity to discuss a variety of subjects during the conference with a variety of persons, including Saeed Alavivafa, a member of the five-person Iranian delegation to the HFCC; Jeff Cohen of World Radio Network; Teresa Abreu of Radio Portugal; and George McClintock, who is now a consultant for shortwave station WWCR, as well as for the Caribbean Beacon stations in Anguilla and Costa Rica. 

At the Thursday afternoon plenary session, Emirates Media officially invited the HFCC to the next conference in the United Arab Emirates February 5-9, 2007.  They will host the conference either in Abu Dhabi or in Dubai, where it was held a few years ago.  The final date for schedule submissions for the A07 conference is January 12, 2007.  So far there is no volunteer to host the B07 conference, so offers are being accepted.

At the plenary, Jan Willem Drexhage talked about new HFCC software that was being tested at this conference.  "Coordination is almost real-time now, and it works fine," he said.  Vladislav Cip introduced an automatic collision detection system on the HFCC website already before the conference. The users of the system can view and print the collisions directly from their internet browsers.  An improved tracking of changes is also available along with filtering possibilities in the collision files.  In addition, a new collision detection routine based on Signal-to-Interference ratio (S/I) that had been developed by Navid Homayouni of IRIB (Iran) was also tested during the conference in Athens.

A new HFCC member was approved at the plenary.  It is the Federal Network Agency of Germany. 

Geoff Spells said that there are a number of documents related to WRC07 matters on the HFCC website (www.hfcc.org).  He said that over the past year there have been a number of meetings to deal with the input for the 2007 ITU World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC07).  Unfortunately there is no general agreement on the text regarding the controversial subject of additional spectrum for broadcasters between 4 and 10 MHz.  "Our view," said Geoff, " is to take space from the fixed services and have them share extra space with the maritime services.  But there is no agreement on this.  The text includes both points of view, and the WRC07 will have to decide." 

Geoff emphasized that stations need to alert their national administrations that they need additional spectrum.  Many stations have not done this, he lamented.  Oldrich Cip pointed out that the HFCC is ready to help address the national administrations on this subject wherever help is needed.  There is, however, no general agreement even within Europe regarding the exact amount of extra space needed.  France, for example, wants an extra 350 kHz, while the UK wants 450 kHz.  A possible future solution is co-primary sharing of the broadcast services with the fixed services.  "It is worth considering," said Geoff Spells.

Geoff exhibited an interesting series of spectrograms that show very graphically the current occupation of certain sections of spectrum between 4 and 10 MHz, demonstrating the need for more frequencies for broadcasters.  These spectrograms may be seen on the ITU-R and HFCC websites. 

It was pointed out that DRM could eventually lead to better utilization of the spectrum because stations could change frequencies from day to day and hour to hour to take advantage of the best propagation conditions.  However, this assumes that the DRM receivers will have the capability of following these signals automatically.

There is an ITU working party that is trying to develop recommendations regarding protecting broadcasters from power line communications (BPL/PLC), but they have made no recommendations yet.

Also at the plenary, Oldrich Cip called for a decision by the HFCC regarding worldwide distress and safety frequencies -- a topic that had been discussed at the last HFCC Conference in Hainan, China.  The membership decided to reject any submissions for these frequencies, so they will not be included in the HFCC database.  Oldrich also indicated that the Steering Board is concerned that the IRUS monitoring group has virtually stopped functioning.  "We want to enlarge on our own group to monitor the real usage of the spectrum," he said, "and make information available on a continuing basis."

After the plenary session, the ERT (Voice of Greece) sponsored a very nice buffet, which was planned for the hotel garden area, but had to be moved indoors due to the wind.  There was a great variety of both Greek and international cuisine.  At our table were James Serpell and Mathias Svensson from CVC (Christian Vision), Chris Cooper from FEBC and Allen Graham from HCJB. 

The technical setup at the HFCC in Athens was very good, with electrical outlets for everyone's laptops and plug adapters on hand for those (like us) who needed them.  Several shared desktop computers were available at the back of the room for checking e-mail, web surfing, etc.  There was high-speed Internet available in the meeting room, and it worked well, although it slowed a bit at peak times in the afternoon when everyone was uploading their updated requirement files.  I made the mistake of trying to upload an audio file during "rush hour" one afternoon, and Vladislav came to tell me that my upload was causing the whole system to get jammed up! 

On Friday at noon just before the conference ended, Continental Electronics sponsored a very nice farewell reception/lunch.  Sotiris Vorgias, Horst Scholz and others thanked Continental for their generous sponsorship of the event, which was a perfect finale to a memorable HFCC Conference.

For a selection of photos from the HFCC Conference in Athens, you can visit the website www.hfcc.org/photo.