Mixed Conclusions About Powerline Networking vs. Ham Radio

Barence writes "Since writing about the success he's had with powerline networking, a number of readers emailed PC Pro's Paul Ockendon to castigate him for recommending these products, such as HomePlug. They were all amateur radio enthusiasts, claiming the products affect their hobby in much the same way that urban lighting affects amateur astronomers, but rather than causing light pollution they claim powerline networking causes radio pollution in the HF band (otherwise known as shortwave). Paul's follow-up feature, 'Does powerline networking nuke radio hams?' documents his investigation into these claims, which found evidence to support both sides of an intriguing debate."

Comments

It isn't just a hobby

[Nefarious Wheel]

It's a volunteer emergency communications organisation.

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[PotatoFarmer]

Did you read the part of the article where the author advocates checking with neighbors before using the Powerline stuff to make sure there are no interference problems? That doesn't strike me as particularly one-sided.

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[Bill_the_Engineer]

And I would MUCH rather trust the organization of a relief effort to trained professionals -- like state, federal, and military emergency staff -- to a bunch of "volunteers."

Wow. I mean wow what a very ignorant statement.

Obviously you don't know that most first responders during a disaster are volunteers. I will just briefly mention how ineffective FEMA, the state of Louisiana, the Orleans parish, and the city of New Orleans were during the recovery efforts of Katrina. Thank God there were church groups, American Red Cross, Amateur Radio operators, and other voluntary relief agencies or the disaster could have been much worse.

Usually there are more falaties after the disaster strikes than during. Thankfully we have a community of volunteers willing to help mitigate the danger. May I add at their own expense and peril.

Bill

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[Bill_the_Engineer]

As someone who served on the disaster committee of a regional American Red Cross chapter and worked along side two county EMA directors as well as the state EMA, I would politely disagree with you.

You will find a VHF and HF amateur radio station at most county EMA offices and the state EMA office. You will also find them at all three weather service offices that serves my state. Why? Because most amateur radio operators that volunteer to help us out are willing to attend a class on how we expected them to help us. They are courteous and professional, and most importantly they are already "out in the field" and FREE labor. The fact that they have the equipment capable of providing reliable long distance communications is a bonus.

I don't know how wealthy your local government is, but ours prefer to use the professional emergency responders to handle law enforcement, curfews, medical emergencies, and leave the "health and welfare" communications (which include status updates from shelters and staging areas) to the amateur radio operators. During a large scale disaster, the professional labor pool quickly becomes inadequate and we are always looking for trained volunteers in addition to the radio operators.

Amateur radio operators also help the national weather service by participating in SKYWARN. During the 90's they helped confirm weather warnings issued while nexrad (next generation radar) was being deploy. Today, they still serve a purpose by being the eyes and ears of the national weather service.

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever hear of RACES (Radio Amateur Communication Emergency Service) Just about every community and fire department in So. California has a RACES group. The professionals know that when the big one strikes, their multi million dollar EMCOMM systems will be useless. In fact, most emergency command centers have ham radio communications capabilities included.
I have a friend who's wife is alive because the Coast Guard monitors amateur radio.
The Red Cross, and the Salvation Army have amateur radio affiliates. They can not afford to rely on the phone system, or the goverment to provide communications.
If ham radio is so outdated, why does the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center use amateur radio operators as storm spotters to provide ground truth verification of weather conditions.
With regard to professionals with professional digital equipment, ask the fire department in NY about communications on 9-12-01 or the local public safety agencies in Lousiana and Missisippi after Katrina came ashore. A large volume of the critical communications were carried by amateur radio.
Also ask the survivors of the tsunami on Christmas day a few years back. First notice of the disaster was provided by ham radio. In fact ham radio was the official means of communications for many islands for weeks.
As far as outdated, Ham radio has e-mail systems that utilize HF radio to transmit e-mail. Amateur radio has a fleet of satelites including the international Space Station, Amateur radio utilizes TV technology, VOIP to radio comunications capability, digital and packet radio capability and microwave linkage capability. Ham radio operators can set up and configure these systems in the field on a moments notice. This is why the Goverment and the EMCOMM community is pushing to integrate ham radio into their systems.
Ham radio provides large pool of trained radio communications technicians that can restore communications just about anywhere at any time.

I agree there are some ham operators who show up on the day of a disaster who shouldn't be there, but there are many other hams who have gone to the trouble to train themselves in incident command systems, who have submitted to the mandatory background checks required for volunteers and who have taken the time to practice the emergency communications skills needed for disaster communications.

If anyone is a Wanna-be, it is the EMCOMM community that is trying to develop the capability and skill of the ham radio community.

I sincerely hope your community never needs to find out how effective amateur radio is in a disaster situation. I also hope your local EMCOMM systems and professionals never need to rely on the amateur radio community for help. I do hope your local EMCOMM community does a risk analysis and a what if analysis to identify their vulnerabilities and I hope they have planned for the worst case scenario.

Oh and one last word... ham radio is fun.

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[spickus]

I did, and you me gave a license saying that I may operate my toys. Furthermore my transmitters, if operated correctly, may cause your unlicensed devices interference which you must accept. You however may not interfere with my toys.
73
DE K2TY SK

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[Anonymous Coward]

Well - they have. It's called "Federal Regulations" and the "FCC". If you look at your gear, you'll notice it's certified as a "Part 15" device. Part of that certification says: "may not cause interference and must accept interference, including interference that causes undesirable operation". Hams are licensed - part 15 are not. In the official 'pecking order' - you loose.

So long as the ham is following the rules, regulations and operating to good engineering practices, any help you get from him in minimizing interference issues is out of the goodness of his own heart. Not because of the law. The law says it's your problem and the ham has no obligation to fix it. It's all on you.

But, this is off topic here and I'll leave it to you to educate yourself on how things really work.

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[kc8apf]

Actually, it's fairly common to have international interference that prevents communication on the lower bands (160m/80m). So, yes, interference generated in China _can_ cause hams in the US to not be able to use that frequency range.

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[Anonymous Coward]

When you're in a disaster, you're not really interested in getting help from other people who are also in the affected area, who are also without power.

You want help from people *outside* the affected area. And if this goes forward, they won't be able to hear you. Which means there's no reason to keep the radios in the first place.

That's as wrong as it could be.

It's for this reason that hams, at least in the US and Canada, and likely other places, stage what's called Field Day every year. They gather in groups and operate under what are essentially emergency conditions. There is some operation from commercial power, but that may be sporadically available even in a disaster. It may not be right there at your house, but if it's available anywhere nearby, you can gather up all your mobile gear and go to the firehouse, police station or hospital where you're likely to have generators kicked in. The radio gear local authorities have (as shown on 9/11) is often not inter-operable. To this day, despite all the FEMA talk. A huge number of hams are already trained and certified to do this and they have regular drills. If you read the history of the Amateur Radio Service, its original mission was to have a ready reserve of trained, competent communicators in case they were needed for the war effort. They were needed and were deployed with amazing speed.

Any time your town has one of those realistic hurricane, earthquake or flood drills, you can bet there are hams among the first responders, specifically because they know that phone lines go down and cell towers either lose power or get overloaded.

Aside from operating on commercial power, Field Day is mostly based on self-provided power. Hams use generators, solar power, batteries and any number of other power sources. Yes, some even make use of small generators powered by someone on what looks like a stationary exercise bike. It may come as a surprise that a low-power (less than five watts) radio can be an amazingly effective communications tool in the hands of a trained, experienced operator.

Note also that little, if any, of this communications capability is funded by the government (another way of saying tax dollars out of your pocket). It's largely individually self-funded by individual hams or by radio clubs to which they belong. Many hams also maintain and constantly verify operation of gear collected in "go bags" -- duffels or cases containing everything necessary to travel a hundred miles and set up a fully operating station within a very short time. One friend in particular has everything needed for a station stored in well under two cubic feet in his (small) car trunk at all times. I've seen him open the trunk and get on the air within fifteen minutes. If AC is available, he plugs in his power supply. If not, he has fittings on his battery that he can clip into in seconds.

Aside from that, many hams also have constantly-operating mobile units in their personal vehicles. I listen to a group five mornings a week where half the operators are mobile. And yes, they are exempt from (at least) California laws mandating hands-free cellphone operation. Like pilots, ambulance drivers, police, etc., they are trained to drive and communicate safely at the same time.

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[Anonymous Coward]

You obviously never monitor these frequencies.

How do you think news comes out of censored countries ?

The AARP regularly has hams calling in weather info,
assisting in areas with poor cell phone signals and traffic issues.

do not be so myopic you do not see the benefit of a free and uncensored news and information source because it does not fit your ideas of what is useful.

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[mrchaotica]

The AARP regularly has hams calling in weather info, assisting in areas with poor cell phone signals and traffic issues.

Are you sure you don't mean AARL instead of AARP? AARP is a senior citizens' group.

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[Muad'Dave]

Go ahead and do it. It's a great hobby, and there are plenty of different activities on bands not wiped out by BPL or this mess. You can even bounce signals off the moon and talk across the world over our own satellites!

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[jrmcferren]

Take up the hobby anyway. You are more likely to encounter interference from faulty power line hardware (insulators, etc) than from these devices at this time. Have fun I hope that you do get into this hobby.

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[Verdatum]

Unfortunately, the range has sorta sucked recently....stupid sunspots, we miss you.

(Call Sign: N3ZQV)

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[adm1329]

If we're keeping HAM around for a few thousand (at most?) true hobbyists, using the excuse that it's a disaster tool, then that's a false need to support an old and dying hobby, and it's preventing rolling out commercial BoPL services to support millions of americans with a cheaper and more stable communications system, and holding back an economy worth billions of dollars for some 50+ year old tech. How stupid is that?

So few people use HAM anymore, we could also just as easily slash the available HAM freequency swath down to a fraction of what it is assigned for, and put BoPL at the other end of the original range, accounting for harmonic frequency crossover, and simply by simplt FCC legislation completely end this debate once and for all...

There are 16660 HAM operators who hold active licenses in the state of Georgia alone, I'm one of them who is a member of a local ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Services) group. Are we the only communications in a time of emergency? No, but we are very effective and can be on the scene ready to go quicker than you'll get a comsat system into many rural areas. We don't just provide communications during emergencies we sometimes provide radio communications at large events where the local police may not have effective radio coverage.

HAM's are not necessarily opposed to BPL, we just want it done right. The standards that are being pushed allow for too much interference. BPL should be able to be configured to use a certain slice of the spectrum and not the wide band it uses now (not sure about BPL but I know the home adapters use 2-30 MHz) Would it hurt the FCC to insist that BPL narrow down the frequency range they use and keep it outside of the Amateur bands?

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[iconic999]

"If we're keeping HAM around for a few thousand (at most?) true hobbyists, using the excuse that it's a disaster tool" There are over 720,000 licensed hams in the USA, over a million in Japan. Ham radio is been a fertile bed for innovation. BoPL is a crappy technology.

Re:It isn't just a hobby

[Dr. Zim]

Secondly, using a limited communication system just to tell someone is ok is most likely a bad idea in the grand scheme of things. It may seem cold, but emergency situations and the communications related to life and death situations should always take precedence over "Hi mom. I'm ok."

If your ok. Then there are ok. No matter of lack of communication will change that.

You can always tell them the story when the ordeal is done. If you don't stay safe then that is the real problem.

The ARRL National Traffic System prioritizes messages between routine and emergency. We've been doing this for a while now, so a lot of those little details have been worked out. http://nts.ema.arrl.org/node/31 links to the training manual for a NTS operator. Also, It might be further down in the comments, but the DoD still places value on the amateur radio network with the 9th Signal Command's MARS Program. Hams handle health and welfare traffic and phone patches for service members abroad. Yeah, your kid can tell you he's OK when he gets home from the war, but wouldn't you like to hear from him once in a while when he's there?

Lastly, on satellite coms... Bandwidth & Throughput. If either were plentiful, they wouldn't cost $3.00/min.

Re:Home Plug Rocks

[sfbiker]

I doubt any EM leaked out of that house.

Except out the power lines that are good at radiating RF outside the house just like they are good at carrying RF inside the house. At least until they reach a transformer.

Sorry, that doesn't make sense.

[Bruce Perens]

Search and rescue have sufficient VHF and UHF bands. We're talking about HF, which is for long range, which is a very different sort of disaster communication from search and rescue. One band won't do for this, because ionospheric weather varies throughout the day and over longer cycles, and thus the frequency that worked for long-range communication an hour ago might not work now. Thus, there are several ham bands. They are well-used and all of them in total are much narrower than a single TV channel!

Frequency planning is an area you would need to study further before you could make sensible statements about it. Sorry, and good luck if you do decide to look into it.

Re:Who cares about HAM radio

[Ksevio]

If there's any question about HAM operators on the Internet, just check any of the wikipedia articles on radios. You'll easily find lots of (well cited from multiple sources per sentence) stories about how HAM operators invented modern electronics and have saved the world multiple times from disaster. In fact, you'll wonder how any country could get along without them!

Re:Who cares about HAM radio

[Ellis D. Tripp]

Like it or not, the "asshole with the fugly antenna" had it right.

If you look in the manual that came with your TV, you will see a little bit of small print talking about "FCC part 15 regulations". These essentially say that your TV cannot unintentionally radiate a signal that will disrupt any licensed radio service, and, more importantly, that your TV viewing IS NOT PROTECTED against interference by licensed radio services, as long as said stations are operating within their legal requirements (power output, spectral purity, etc.).

In short, you don't have a license to watch TV, but the ham DOES have a license to transmit up to 1500W of RF on various frequencies, whether it screws up your TV or not. If you don't like this, you are free to buy a better quality TV receiver, that incorporates all those "frivolous" features like proper shielding and filtering, that usually get "value engineered" out in order to sell the set for fewer bucks at WalMart.

A good summary of FCC Part 15 available here:

http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/part15.html

BTW, you could be subject to FEDERAL charges for damaging a federally licensed radio transmitting station, , if your "asshole" neighbor wanted to press things. Generally, hams are more than willing to work with their neighbors to resolve interference issues (even if not legally required to), but when said complaints become abusive or threatening, we are fully within our rights to tell you to take your cheap Chinese TV set and stick it where the sun don't shine. And the FCC will back us up, every time.

Re:Keep the HAM

[Zondar]

For a wire to not be an efficient RF radiator, typically it has to be 1/4 wavelength or longer. For the freqencies we're talking about (up to 30MHz), 1/4 wavelength can be as short as 2.5 meters (since 28MHz is around 10 meters).

14 MHz is only 20 meters, so a piece of wire 5 meters long (or even a combination of wires that are segmented together through a panel) can become a radiator (aka transmitting antenna).

You can see where this is going. It's hard to get the frequency low enough where the typical wire layout in even a small home won't tend to transmit RF energy. The lower the frequency, the smaller the frequency spread. You can't transmit as much data in 2-10MHz (8 MHz of total RF spread) as you can in 2-30MHz (28 MHz of spread), and so the throughput rate of the device would be so small that it would no longer be a viable product.

They're caught between physics and the market.

Re:HF Not Just for Hams

[Tisha_AH]

There are other services in the HF band between 1.8 MHz and 50 MHz than just Ham operators and shortwave radio stations.

The spectrum is also used for aviation, particularly when commercial aircraft are over the ocean and out of line-of-sight to a shore station. Most ships at sea use HF radio for communications from ship to ship and for ship to shore communications. The military still uses HF communications for a great many systems, including the broadcast of EAM (emergency action messages).

Someone will say "so what, they are way up in the air or in the middle of the ocean" but they fail to realize that the shore based stations are subject to interference while trying to receive signals from aircraft and ships.

There are still radio navigation systems that operate in the HF bands, weather bouys in the ocean sending back data by HF and many other overlooked systems of lesser renown.

Having spent a significant amount of my professional life hunting down interference sources to communications systems I can say it is NOT a good idea to put a thousand low powerline network extenders across a city. There WILL be harmonic interference, intermodulation and an overall decrease in performance. Look at how badly screwed up the 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth and ZigBee are? The 2.4 and 5.8 GHz devices at least have the decency of being line-of-sight and range is limited by buildings. As soon as you attach something to the wiring system of your home you create something that is impossible to manage (resolving interference issues).

Give this one to the Hams and to those of us who still own and use shortwave radios.

Re:Who cares about HAM radio

[Mashiki]

Truth. Not only that but there are people still coming into this. I'm working towards my amateur here in Canada, and I'll be glad to get it. For those of us who live in the middle of no where, this stuff is our only lifeline when everything else fails(see ice storms, blizzards, and other natural disasters like floods).

Re:Sheesh

[Ned Scott]

jesus christ, you have no fucking clue about how electricity works. This isn't the result of "poor wiring" at all, and circuit breakers DO NOT act as isolators (why the hell would you think they would?).

Re:Sheesh

[Muad'Dave]

That's curious. My meter will not block anything. The TRANSFORMER provides some isolation, but for many of us in the US, that's on a utility pole up to 100' from the house. Since the lines from the transformer to the house are usually strung overhead, they make very effective radiators.