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Hams Complain about Powerline Broadband
dwm writes "Think
broadband over power lines (BPL) would be wonderful? There might be some collateral damage. The American Radio Relay League (your friendly neighborhood ham radio operators) have documented dramatic HF radio interference in areas where BPL is being tested (Check out the video of actual interference)."
It can go around the world without the need of a network. That is all.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
Yes. It is a distributed network of independent nodes, most of which have generators and battery backups, whose primary reason for existing is for emergency communications. In case of massive disruption of power and other transmissions ... they can keep broadcasting. It's low-tech, cheap, and easy. Can even be mobile. And in the intervals between emergencies, you can chat.
After the big Mexico City earthquake, all the microwave towers had to be realigned, the phones were out until lines and power to switching equipment could be restored, and none of the TV stations could reach their satellites - one TV building collapsed. For the critical first few hours, the hams in Mexico City (civilian, military and diplomatic nodes) were the sole source of contact between the city and the rest of the world ... much of it through New Zealand hams who then relayed the information to North America because of an odd bounce in the transmissions.
After things settled down a bit, I spent hours at a local tech college's ham setup with other bilingual persons, recieving and transcribing "we're OK" messages, while other students relayed the messages to the closest ham station they could reach that might be able to get the message through. On the Mexican end, mobile ham units were relaying messages, neighborhood by neighborhood. (most of those neighborhoods don't have running water, let alone cable for boradband).
I realize you are trolling....
But I'll bite. Recently here in NE Ohio, we were hit by some pretty bad storms that caused some pretty destructive flash flooding. Hams reporting weather conditions and flood reports over the SKYWARN system were able to get realtime info to both the national weather service and to the local Red Cross branch so that they could get shelters set up in trouble areas before they were needed. In particular, an apartment complex had two of their buildings cut off when the little 12" stream that ran in front of their building rose to 12 feet. This also knocked out power to that area, so we had roughly 100+ people isolated (the only way out was a good 40 min hike though some rough terrain even if it hadn't been pouring down rain for 8 hours already) on the other side of a now major river. Two ham's (sorry guys, forget your calls) hopped in a 4WD vehicle and went there and did an onsite assesment even before the already overtaxed police showed up on site. That is what ham radio is really set up for. The band allocation that we get to play with is meant for emergency communications. Sure, we use it for rag chews mostly, but when the crap hits the fan, I'm glad I have a 2M HT that can get me communications when I need it. The major trouble with the BPL thing is that it already creates interference on the bands, and they lobbiests want to increase the wattage they push, which will worsen the situation exponentially.
And besides, what good will a cell phone do if your towers go down like they did when the WTC fell? Ham radio had comms flowing in and out of ground zero in under 3 hours then.
Ham radio still fills a very vital role in todays world when a disaster strikes.
73 KC8SNS
Actually, Ham radio operators, being licensed do NOT have to accept interference! That is the diference between a "Part 15" device and a Part 97 device.
Your 802.11 device has to accept interference, part 97 (Ham radio) or any other licensed service does not
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
I'm not a radio geek, or lawyer, but, doesn't every device that has an FCC label on it basically say that you have to accept any interference that occurs? Therefore, if it bothered the 802.11 spectrum, we'd be irritated about it, and probably contact someone to get it changed. But, until things changed, we'd have to deal with it, either by filtering the noise, changing frequencies, etc.
You can't filter this stuff. It's absolutely rock-crushing interference. The problem is that the overhead electrical wiring is a really efficient antenna.
The other thing is, that Amateur Radio is a licensed service, which give it certain privileges, one of those being that you aren't allowed to interfere with it. You're thinking of unlicensed devices, like wireless phones, that aren't protected this way.
Yet another thing: BPL radiates over a HUGE bandwidth. The BPL companies want to use 2 to 80 MHz. That would wipe out the entire HF band, which hams and others use to communicate long distance. It also includes 6 meter VHF (50-54 MHz). In contrast the entire HF allocation to hams is 3.36 Mhz total. Include 6m, and it's 7.36. BPL is an enormous bandwidth hog.
This implementation of BPL would be disastrous for ham radio and anyone else using HF frequencies, like shortwave broadcasters, coast guard, government, marine, and so on.
The idea that they could obliterate 78 MHz of spectrum should be of concern to everyone, not just hams.
Either way, the ball is in the court of the HAM operators. Get together and start writing letters, making phone calls, etc.
We are. BTW, ham is not an acronym.
The same place they found them after 9/11 where ham radio was the only reliable mode of comms around ground zero for a couple of days. You know who told the disaster workers WHO to contact to start getting phones setup? The Hams on site, who had contacts with the right folks
You live in, let's sa the LA area (you mention earthquakes). No a search on LA and CERT. The hams TRAIN to work with the police and fire departments in case of disaster
Look up ARES - The Amateur Radio Emergency Service
Look up the fact that ARES works closely with the Red Cross, the Dept of Homeland Security, FEMA, LOTS of fire departments, wilderness rescue teams and the like
Look up RACES - Look up what happens if the Government declares a Radio Communications Emergency (and think about what happens to your 802.11 links - say "Bye-bye")
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
Packet radio is extremely routable. TCP/IP is one way we do it, but actually is not the most common method.
As another poster pointed out, amateur radio operators mainly use AX.25. Both TCP/IP and AX.25 are X.25 derivatines. AX.25 identifiers are Amateur Radio callsigns with numeric suffixes (such as "N0CALL-10"). AX.25 routing is done by broadcasting while gradually incrementing your TTL until someone hears them for you (if they aren't your immediate neighbor), or manually entered information (either as a route table or "Connect to SOME1 via SOME2, SOME3, SOME4").
There are also a few other ways (such as NETROM and ROSE) amateur radio operators can route information digitally. While it would be a stretch, NETROM could be considered our equivalent of BGP router advertising and periodic route annoucements. ROSE is a polled system similar to Token Ring.
We also have our share of propritary speedup techniques (such as KA-NODE from Kantronics) and experiemental protocols as well.
That's really naive. Why do we still rely on cars? They're over 100 years old; haven't we moved to something more modern?
To suggest that ham radio hasn't evolved is completely ignorant. Modern ham radios sport LCDs, top-quality DSP filters to pull out signals you might not otherwise here, advanced speech compression, etc. Modern repeaters are Internet-linked; a local repeater might be linked with one in a foreign country over the Internet. It's hardly the radio Marconi knew.
Futhermore, hams are constantly coming up with new ideas. 'Back in the day,' it was a ham who invented cordless phones. (Which eventually evolved into cell phones.) Hams are constantly innovating; while some hams love nothing more than Morse code on an 'antique' radio, quite a few are also pioneering new technologies -- PSK31, for example, a remarkable digital technology usable on the HF (worldwide) bands, that uses very little bandwidth and is able to work well even with heavy interference.
Yet another factor you overlook is the role hams play in emergency communications. A TON of hams are actively involved in emergency communications. I'm hundreds of miles from New York City; on September 12th, 2001, several local hams flew out to NYC to help with emergency communications. In a testament to how many hams help, they were turned away due to the fact that they already had too many volunteers providing emergency communications.
I have a cell phone and a high-speed Internet connection. But what happens when there's an Earthquake, and the local phone lines (which the cell towers are connected to) and Internet lines are taken down? Hams have a history -- that lives on -- of providing emergency communications.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Check this out..
There's a link there for the PDF of the spectrum allocation. Pretty much "DC to Daylight". The piece that BPL is going to destroy covers a lot of Ham allocations. But it also covers things like:
Maritime Mobile
Aeronautical Mobile
Space Research
Standard Time Signals
Shortwave Broadcast
Radio Astronomy
Land Mobile
Fixed-station
The amateur service is a very small part of the spectrum below 30 Mhz. A lot of it is used for things like trans-oceanic flights, military and civilian mobile services, and the like.
I'm of two minds whether this will pass or not. Michael Powell, the FCC chair, hasn't made a good decision since he got into office, so I'm thinking this will go through because he's got the power companies all giving him blow jobs under the table. On the other hand, the FAA, NTIA, the military, and the shortwave broadcasters may get through to the FCC that they can't allow this, and maybe somebody will get that lamebrain Powell to do something right.
That said, RFI problems like you described are usually NOT the fault of Amateur Radio operators. More specifically:
1. Many times the source of interference is someone operating illegally. Illegal CB operation (I.E. big huge amplifiers - which are against FCC rules, etc. etc.) is probably the biggest cause. Believe me, most Ham radio operators would love to take these people out back and teach them about respect for the rules.
2. Even if the source of the interference is an Amateur radio operator, many times the problem is tracked down to a low-quality piece of consumer equipment at the person being interfered with's end. As long as the Ham radio operator is operating within the rules, the owner of the equipment is responsible to fix the issue - as it is their equipment with the technical problem.
3. If it is in fact the amateur radio operator's problem, it is their duty to fix it. The FCC can and does pull licenses for this type of stuff.
If you are having problems along this line, contact your local Ham Radio Club a call. In most cases, they have a vested interest in finding the source of the problem and helping fix it. You can see clubs in your area by going to The club search page on the ARRL site.
Remember that Ham radio operators provide a valuable service when the crap hits the fan. Most Amateur radio operators are actually skilled in what they do and take great pains to insure they don't cause unwanted interference, as interference only hurts the Ham radio community.
Keep that in mind next time you're flying in from europe on approach to Kennedy airport.
All the communications that planes use all the way across the ocean is shortwave. Aeronautical mobile service. But this is only a few thousand people a day, no big deal, let 'em miss the airport?
Maybe next time your fishing boat is out in the atlantic and you need to call the coast guard. Maritime mobile service. Wow, this might only be a dozen people a year, let 'em drown.
Your "proportion to number of users effected" argument doesn't look so good now does it?
Every time there's an earthquake or a hurricane in the western hemisphere, I get a little email from the FCC via the ARRL telling me I can't use a specific set of frequencies because they're being used for emergency health and welfare traffic. Usually this is the non-urgent stuff, like "yeah, mom, me and the kids got through the earthquake OK". But that's only a few thousand folks a year. Let mom worry.
These are things that happen. Real people who use those frequencies in ways that make their lives better. And you are advocating interfering with all of that so you can get Internet access into your house faster and cheaper. Your "nature of use" argument begins to wear here. Seriously, given the choice between more effective air-sea rescue and cheaper porn, you're choosing the porn. Unfortunately, I think the FCC's on your side. I don't think Congress is though, they've already overruled that dickmaster once.
Admittedly, this is low power interference, but on those frequencies, it doesn't take much to send signals globally. Seriously, you can send signals with fractions of a watt in the right conditions and get good readable copy on the other side of the world. This interference level would pretty much devastate those frequencies worldwide.
"It's more of a hobby than a necessity"
As a strike team leader for a mountain search and rescue team, I'll tell you that without HAM radio, our job would be just plain impossible in many situations. There simply is no other option currently in existence. HAM radio is not only a hobby, but in my line of work it's a critical life-support resource, more so than any other technology we use (except maybe a flashlight). Tell the thousands of people whose lives have been saved through S&R or any of the other emergency situations that depend on HAM capabilities that it's not really a necessity.
KD5SMV
I have a girlfriend whose name doesn't end in
I have to second this. On a class camping trip a few years back we were at a hike-in campground along the coast in a remote part of California (yes, there are still some remote parts of California). One morning while boiling water for some coffee one of the guys on the trip accidentally overturned the pot, drenching himself with boiling water. Needles to say, he received some extremely bad burns from this. We were out of cell range, no phones within 15-20 miles, and no vehicles with us. The scope of the burns was way beyond anything we could treat with the first aid equipment we had on hand. Fortunately, one of the people on the trip was an amateur HAM radio operator and had brought his portable equipment along. Unable to contact anyone nearby, he was able to contact an operator in Hawaii, who then called the police and rescue people in our vicinity, who were then able to send a truck to pick him up in just over an hour. The HAM radio probably saved this guy's life - though yes, if we had had a satellite phone along it might have done the trick (but then it might not have - after using GPS, which tends to be extremely fickle in wooded areas, I'm not at all certain that it would have worked anyway). HAM provides a long-range method of communications that we really don't have a higher-tech replacement for at this point.