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

[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

[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?

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: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.