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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.
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.
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suwain_2
"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