KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

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Hey! Enough with the noise!

Posted: 16 Jun 2016 01:17 PM PDT
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The FCCs Office of Engineering and Technology has just issued ET DocketÂ*No.
16-191. The documentÂ*announces an investigation into a perceived problem
with increased RF noise levels and requests input from interested parties.
Who is more interested in this issue than hams?

The document starts out:

The FCC’s Technological Advisory Council (TAC), an advisory group to the
FCC operating under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, is investigating
changes and trends to the radio spectrum noise floor to determine if there
is an increasing noise problem, and if so, the scope and quantitative
evidence of such problem(s), and how a noise study should be performed. In
this public notice, the Office of Engineering and Technology (OET)
announces the TAC’s public inquiry, seeking comments and answers to
questions below for the TAC about radio spectrum noise.

The TAC is requesting input to help answer questions about the study of
changes to the spectrum noise floor over the past 20 years. Noise in this
context denotes unwanted radio frequency (RF) energy from man-made sources.
Like many spectrum users, TAC members expect that the noise floor in the
radio spectrum is rising as the number of devices in use that emit radio
energy grows. However, in search for concrete evidence of increased noise
floors, we have found limited available quantitative data to support this
presumption. We are looking to find ways to add to the available data in
order to answer important questions for the FCC regarding this topic.

A list of questions follows. These include:

Is there a noise problem?
Where doees the problem exist?
Is there quantitative evidence of the overall increase in the total
integrated noise floor acrossÂ*various segments of the radio frequency
spectrum?
How should a noise study be performed?


Each of these questions has a number of sub-questions. The deadline for
comments isÂ*August 11, 2016.

The post Hey! Enough with the noise! appeared first on KB6NUs Ham Radio
Blog.


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Amateur radio in the newsin Hawaii

Posted: 16 Jun 2016 11:44 AM PDT
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HoÊ»okipa “pill boxâ€� has roots in radio.Â*Members of the Maui Amateur Radio
Club will participate in the national Amateur Radio Field Day exercise, on
Saturday, June 25 in a field between the H�na Highway and the ocean, just
past Ho’okipa Beach Park.Â*Field Day, an event started by the Amateur Radio
Relay League in 1933, is the largest emergency communication event in the
world. Field Day also showcases the science and skill of Amateur Radio.
This event is open to the public and all are encouraged to attend. The club
was established in 1936 and claims to be Hawaiis first amateur radio club.



Communication’sÂ*last line. LIHUE — The highlight of Tad Miura’s experience
as a ham radio operator happened in 2010, on a particularly slow day in
Hawaii’s amateur radio world. In fact, had Miura not been on his radio, the
ham operator attempting to communicate with Hawaii from the International
Space Station may have passed over unnoticed. But instead, the two of them
were able to log the contact in their records, and had about eight minutes
of uninterrupted conversation before the International Space Station
orbited out of range. “He knew about the Navy base here, about PMRF
(Pacific Missile Range Facility), and he said he’d been there,� Miura said.
“So we were able to have a conversation about that.�

The post Amateur radio in the newsin Hawaii appeared first on KB6NUs Ham
Radio Blog.