By far this is the most pressing issue at hand. The direct answer is to review the list of Pending & In Progress coordination requests on the front page of the web. Specifically, each coordination request is being handled in the order they have been received. There is a back-log and it’s due mostly to time availability and administrative issues.
Unless you’ve had to coordinate a repeater yourself, it may be hard to understand what takes so long. It’s a multiple step process. Here are the steps required after you have submitted your coordination request.
- Your signed application form is administered by the Frequency Coordinator. The specific data is entered into a sophisticated coordination software program called CTK (Coordinators Tool Kit). This software was developed and maintained by Dave Karr KA9FUR, the Wisconsin Frequency Coordinator.
- If you have requested a specific frequency, it is checked against the data base for not only Wisconsin, but our adjoining states as well, depending on where in the State you are asking to be coordinated. This might be Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana or Michigan. More than one State may need to be checked.
- Your data regarding the coordination parameters, band, site location, antenna location, transmitter details are entered and subjected to a modeling program. No longer does WAR Inc. use a simple “protractor” approach to coordination. The bands are much too crowded for that simple method to be used. Not only is a frequency or pair of frequencies checked, but also the “first adjacent” frequencies are reviewed. To minimize interference to your station, and to minimize interference to others, a diagnostic approach is completed.
- Selection of frequency is now completed and your request is submitted to our neighboring frequency coordination councils. They are given the parameters of the coordination and are requested to reply to our request within 30 days. If there are no issues with the adjoining States, we will issue you an authorization for construction. This means you should complete your project and have it on the air within 6 months.
- The construction phase is your responsibility. Once you have your system on the air, your responsibility is to notify WAR Inc. that you’ve completed the construction and it’s ready for use. This may be a repeater, but also may be an Aux Link, a Control Link or perhaps a Remote Base. If you don’t let WAR Inc. know that you are completed with construction, your coordination will be terminated after 6 months.
- If for any reason you need more than 6 months to complete construction, you must contact WAR Inc. and explain your situation. In most cases you will be granted additional time for completion.
Frequency Coordination is accomplished before the construction and installation phase. You may already have all of the hardware under test, but not on the air. Remember, coordination first, on the air last.