I agree 
Another offset carrier demo, from another pilot:
You can see two of the Scottish FIR aerials transmitting simultaneously. The bandwidth of the receiver was set to 8.33 and it is obvious that the lower offset frequency would not be received unless 25khz bandwidth was selected on the aircraft radio.
IAOPANewsletter Sep 2017
According to Eurocontrol the following 18 states have notified exemptions: Ireland, Latvia, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands, Slovenia, Croatia, Hungary, Malta, Estonia, Poland, UK, Norway, France, Spain and Denmark. Normally the content and the details of these exemptions are supposed to be published in the national AIPs.
Mind-boggling, given how much money has been spent via avionics shops recently and how they have become totally inundated with 8.33 work…
For what it’s worth, I was assigned 118.235MHz (an actual 8.33kHz channel frequency) the other day over Germany or Switzerland, on a flight from EDAZ to LFLP. I think I was passed to them from Bremen Radio and I was at FL210. I had been given a couple other 8.33kHz channels on the trip but they were all ones that could be tuned on an older radio (e.g. 120.005).
I used a Yaesu handheld plugged into my airplane antenna to talk with them. Worked fine, though it was cumbersome. A real 8.33kHz radio will definitely be handy.
For sure, to fly around Europe usefully, you need 8.33 (and Mode S).
The daft thing is that a large % of people, nearly all VFR-only, never fly outside their own country, or just go UK-France, and they could have saved themselves the money.
Peter wrote:
or just go UK-France [to save money on not needing 8.33]
with Ofcom’s punitive airband spectrum pricing, probably not. Many airfields will be able to get a cost reduction of five figures per year by abandoning a 25kHz frequency and going to an 8.33 one – this will make 8.33 absolutely necessary for UK pilots, VFR or not.
Is this pricing for real? It was reported as abandoned for aviation users (airports) some years ago. Are airports paying to Ofcom right here and today?
The CAA lists this as the maximum level of fees per frequency. However, they also say it’s bespoke, which I assume means that smaller places may pay less (or not?) at the discretion of CAA/Ofcom, as Ofcom have apparently delegated the whole thing to CAA.
The whole thing seems strange, but what can you do?
Many thanks, Redrover. From the CAA website:
The above says from 2016, yet no GA airfield in the UK has AFAIK moved to 8.33. So I wonder if this whole thing has been suspended (by the CAA). After all, the UK has applied for the 8.33 exemption. I am sure that most “little places” would move to 8.33 immediately if faced with the above price increases, so there must be more to this story.
This is from IAOPA:
