It would be great, if you allowed for users to declare their license class (Tech / General / Extra) so that when they put in a frequency that would be out of their legal use range, if it would light up red or something. Here is a recent (today) post by the guy who runs POTA. I would bet with a feature like that, you would find a lot of advocacy for your app from the leadership of POTA. (obviously this becomes trickier at an international level, but still seems doable to a non-programmer like me)
[Jason Johnston]
Hey y’all - friendly reminder to everyone since I do get hate mail from time to time… PLEASE take the ARRL (or your country’s) band plan with you, and know the limits. Know that you have to be at least more than three clicks up from the bottom of the band minimum. Some of these guys will even send videos of you on the air and your frequency etc… We want to look great to other radio operators, not that we aren’t careful, or not know what we’re doing… Thanks! 73 W3AAX
OMG. Yes. I need this. I’ve done it more than once. It’s easy enough for sure to implement for us US folks, so I’ll get started on that, and let international folks chime in on how I can support them as well. LOVE the idea. Thanks a ton
Great, I honestly struggle with this for some reason as well… I’m constantly loading my band plan to double check. I just can’t get the numbers in my head for some reason. One of the useful features of the HamLog app is that it contains the ARRL (and a bunch of international) band plans…
Maybe have it turns yellow when you’re within 3 kHz of the band edge (or 160Hz for CW… I think, I’m not a CW guy). And then turns red when you’re totally outside your band privileges.
I would be hesitant to forbid people to enter an out of band value (ham operators are very independent and really do not like to be told they can’t do thing). But just a gentle reminder will be helpful for many…
An even sweeter implementation, would be, once you tell HAMRS you’re a General, then select the 40 meter band, and SSB (or CW, etc), if under the Frequency section, it would show you the allowable Tx range, that way you can see it right there.
When I say allowable Tx range I mean… it’s good to know the full bandwidth, but POTA Jason’s post specifically is talking about that area at the bottom of the band for LSB within 3 kHz, or at the top of the band for USB.
This is useful even if you’re an extra. There’s that pesky range just below the bottom of 20m, 40m and possibly others where VE can use phone but not us…
Let’s not forget, POTA is now global, so (unless you are going to be really selfish and only have this feature for US operators) band plans and frequency allocations vary from country to country.
In addition to the Band Plan Warning could you add a tab with the band plans? I saw some of the screenshots you had with the QSO map tab. having a band plan tab would be great. As a new Ham and a new general I am always pulling the band plan PDF I have to make sure I’m within my bands.
I’m assuming you will have a someplace like in our profile or a QRZ type call look up to denote our license. It would be great to just click on that tab and see the band plan for general to quickly do a check before I transmit
