D Peter Maus wrote:
snip

Consider...None of us are really working the limits on our
receivers, here. We're hobbyists. Casually scanning the bands...

Surprisingly, to me anyway, there are no Usenet Newsgroups
related to radio astronomy, commercial radio, radio engineering,
spectrum surveillance, or other non-ham radio topics. I suppose
these topics are spread out amongst various sci.* and perhaps
business-oriented groups but one would think by now there
would have been some alt.* groups formed for this traffic.

I would also suppose that participants have traditionally
preferred private or exclusive message exchanges such as
mailing lists and secure sites for such traffic, especially
if it involves research data or affiliation with gov't
programs. However, I have noticed a proliferation of
web-based (e.g. Yahoo) discussion groups for serious
scientific data exchange and wonder why Usenet has been
overlooked (I am a fan of public message archiving and
access which is not guaranteed from private message exchanges).

Have any readers here ever wanted to expand the alt.radio hierarchy, e.g.:
alt.radio.radioastronomy
alt.radio.digitalmodes.*
alt.radio.spectrum.*
alt.radio.broadcast.*
alt.radio.sw.*
alt.radio.microwave.*
...

I just wonder if having such expanded hierarchies would promote more
serious (reduced noise) discussions amongst both amateur and professional
radio users and engineers and we might see how some 'hobbyists' are
'working the limits' on high-end RF gear for real research.

Regards,

Michael