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Surveys of the sky between declinations +25° and −90° at 2700 MHz (11 cm) have been in progress for the past 10 years. Excluding some regions close to the galactic plane the whole sky south of +25° has been surveyed to a flux density limit of 0.6 Jy at 2700 MHz and within this area surveys to limits of 0.35, 0.25 or 0.1 Jy have been made covering 3.5 sr. Flux densities have been measured at 5000 MHz for all sources stronger than 0.35 Jy at 2700 MHz. The source positions have an average accuracy of 10″ arc in both coordinates and the positions have been examined for optical identifications on Palomar, ESO or SRC sky survey plates, which now cover 95% of the area. The first part of this paper concerns the relationships between the spectral indices α(2700 to 5000 MHz) and the identifications of the 2300 sources with galactic latitudes greater than 10°. It is a statistically significant sample, since the sources stronger than 0.35 Jy cover 3.5 sr. It is also a representative sample, since no selection was made on the basis of spectral index or identification. It cannot however be claimed as a complete sample, for two reasons. A substantial fraction of sources found in radio surveys at high frequencies are variable - variations of up to a factor of three can occur on a time scale of a year - thus the various sections of the survey are complete only for the relevant epoch. Many of their optical counterparts are also variables - variations of up to a factor of 100 can occur on a time scale of one year. It is hoped to make some assessment of the effect of these two factors in the next two years, when second-epoch Parkes surveys will begin and SRC Schmidt plates will overlap the Palomar Sky Survey.
