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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."
It's not a debate. Doing this turns those power lines into big antennas. You can't debate the laws of physics.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The other is within-home networking like Homeplug. ARRL dealt with early interference issues and has not reported any recent ones as far as I'm aware. But the very earliest models allowed us to hear your phone call on shortwave! Fortunately, people who owned those were found and warned, for the most part.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Props to the egghead who called me after Katrina with a message from my sister saying she was okay.
"keeping the HF bands clear for low signal communication is a bit like keeping the rail tracks clear of fast express trains so that nostalgists can run steam trains over them."
The author's analogy belies the fatal flaw in his though process: HF communications may be older and slower than the internet, but the internet is highly unreliable and fails when communications are most critical. HF always works. HF is the ONLY completely reliable means of long-distance communication that humans have. To destroy mankind's sole means of completely reliable communication in favor of a system which fails when needed most is simply foolish. This isn't about amateur radio. It's merely incidental that most HF communications these days are by hams, and that hams handle disaster comms when the networks go down. These communications could be handled by any group of people, and the result would be the same: without a reliable HF infrastructure, humans screw themselves doubly when nature screws us.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
At the moment, sure; but if interference has been the rule for long enough, most hams will presumably have given up, mothballed their stuff, died off, not taken up the hobby because "what's the point?", and so forth...
The number of people willing to maintain ham gear and skills waiting for the day it'll be useful is, presumably, a fair bit smaller than the number willing to pursue ham day to day as a hobby.
Power lines were never meant to carry RF energy. When they are, they radiate. Cable TV doesn't radiate. It doesn't radiate because it uses a proper transmission medium (Coax). If the power line folks want to distribute DATA, they should string the poles with fiber optic. Better yet, we the people should string it, and sell access to the content providers.. ala municipal fiber networks. They can work folks!
-=[ place
Wake up. BPL is a crappy technology. It guarantees improper radiation because the power lines aren't shielded at the physical layer. Kill BPL now and demand what we all want: Fiber Optic.
-=[ place
yes it is, because the author knows damned well that nobody will actually do this.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
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."
You are obviously not from New Orleans.
Funny, for those of us who are old, ham radio was the entry point into technology. Are you aware that there was a world before computers ? Indeed, my first real job had a realtime voice recognition system which could convert to text with few errors. You went to lunch and an hour later, when you returned (no calls during lunch..no cell phones) your letter was typed and ready for signature. We called it a secretary who could take shorthand. In this era, technology was made up of discrete components, instead of "all in one chips". Some of us wondered what those components did. We learned that they all had a job and you could easily figure it out. Better yet, people often tossed items full of these components away. We called those "dead TV's" and they were full of FREE components, which re-jiggered, would allow you to talk to Europe with a wire in the backyard. Back when the per minute cost of an international phone call was more than the hourly wage, this was big stuff. OK, today hams use four or five digital modes on HF, using little power and less bandwidth. Ham radios are smaller than a deck of cards. A 12 volt power source and small HF rig will fit in a small tool box, and can work the world on a 135 foot bit of wire. As much as I love technology, I was there on 9-11 and the entire cell net in lower manhattan just crashed. Period. The internet is tissue paper-and the current web of communications is not very hard or resilient. The old guy cranking 1500 watts in the basement with tubes is an old stereotype, and except for a few guys "keeping the AM flame alive" on 3885 mhz, gone. The knowledge you obtain hamming does translate to computers-take it apart, try to make it work, modify it. I wonder if the TFA author can discuss frequency hopping spread spectrum digital communicators....er, cell phones.
1. Guy writes an article about a product.
2. Guy gets feedback, some of it far less than civil, stating that he was being irresponsible in his product recommendations.
3. Guy, rather than dismissing the issue as no doubt many would, actually does some research and writes a follow up.
I hardly think that this qualifies as "just about the most ignorant, one-sided article" on this topic, at least among those that you've read. This guy isn't a government agency or an academic group tasked with doing research into public safety concerns so it isn't his job to launch a comprehensive study into the issue.
I get that there seem to be some credible concerns, but you aren't going to win anyone over by making hyperbolic claims about anyone that fails to agree with you. Posting "ignorant, one-sided" insult laden posts on Slashdot isn't exactly helping your cause.
I don't suspect that the most serious hams who have already taken up the hobby will(unless they move, and don't have the space, or the SO starts leaning on them), even if only for nostalgia's sake; but I strongly suspect that, if all you can do is listen to static and wait for emergencies, you aren't going to see much in the way of new blood, and the blood you have isn't going to last forever. And, yeah, I suspect that some of the more casual players are going to say "fuck it" and ebay their gear. Not all, certainly; but numbers count if you want a communications network to work under adverse conditions.
I really don't understand this anti-Ham attitude. These guys have proven themselves time and time again to be an important asset. Katrina certainly is the most recent example, but these guys all over the place put their own money and time into this, but out of some short-term notion of profit, we're basically going to sell them up the river.
And to the dimwits who say "When the powers out, it won't be able problem", how do you test and maintain equipment when BPL is spewing RF all over the place? It's like having a computer without a power jack, but hoping that when they put the power in, no matter how long it takes, the equipment will just magically work.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Exactly. Just yesterday, I was considering taking up the hobby; it's something I've thought about in the past, but never gotten around to doing. If it's looking like I won't even be able to try it out and talk to other ham operators unless/until there is a major emergency, that's certainly not going to encourage me to spend a significant amount of time, space, and money getting into the hobby (if you could even call it that under such circumstances).
As a ham myself for almost 20 years, I understand what you're saying, but all the VHF/UHF in the world isn't going to help in a regional disaster where the scope of the 'dead zone' is beyond VHF/UHF range... like Katrina, or a tsunami, or anything else that affects a large geographic region (like maybe when the Yellowstone caldera finally blows).
At some point, you have to get help from outside the affected area - and probably the only way to contact them (outside of satellite) is going to be HF. If the people who have power CAN'T HEAR YOU DUE TO LOCAL INTERFERENCE ON THEIR END, then what have you actually accomplished? Yes, you've done some local triage. You've probably gathered a list of needed supplies and ordered your 'need' list.
When you've done as much as you can inside the affected area, who are you going to ask for help now?