The IARU Region 3 HF Band Plan com­mit­tee and the IARU Region 3 board have long not­ed the prob­lems on 40m of mis-align­ment of activ­i­ty types between nation­al and even inter-region­al band plans on the 40m band. This paper is the start of a process inves­ti­gat­ing whether improve­ments can be made to the 40m band plan that improve:

• Glob­al har­mon­i­sa­tion of activ­i­ty
• Recog­nise the increase in demand for data mode band space
• Con­sid­er how to improve the avail­abil­i­ty and usabil­i­ty of band seg­ments set aside to sup­port Emer­gency Com­mu­ni­ca­tions
• Con­sid­er ways of reduc­ing con­flict between con­test activ­i­ties and all oth­er band users

The paper sets forth the case for improved har­mon­i­sa­tion and attempts to define empir­i­cal based meth­ods for assess­ing required band seg­ment capac­i­ty for each of the main oper­at­ing mode groups, and then pro­pos­es sev­er­al solu­tions that demon­strate dif­fer­ent ways of solv­ing the problem.

Ama­teur oper­a­tors, IARU Mem­ber soci­eties and region­al clubs are all invit­ed to con­tribute their feed­back and are, in par­tic­u­lar, asked to con­sid­er the ques­tions posed at the end of this paper.

https://www.iaru-r3.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/IARU-Region-3-HF-40m-Band-Plan-Challenges-Proposals-2024_4.pdf