RSGB News

ComReg grants EI amateurs up to 1500 watts in contests

A few months ago the Irish Radio Transmitters Society announced that, after some two years of negotiations, Irish regulator ComReg had agreed that EI licensees would be allowed to run high power in specified contests. Everything then went quiet for a couple of months, but ComReg has now published a document on their web site implementing the change. Consequently, suitably equipped Irish contesters are now able to run 1500 watts in major HF contests and 1000 watts in VHF/UHF contests. The list of permitted events is similar to the one in which UK stations may use short contest callsigns, although more contests could be added to the list in due course. Interestingly, the increased power limit applies to 4m and the whole of the 160m band, but, curiously, not the 10m band.