On Jun 16, 2:19?pm, Mike Coslo wrote:
wrote groups.com:
On Jun 11, 11:21?am, "Bill Horne, W1AC"
wrote:

Like many others, I occasionally use AM on both 160 and 80 meters.

Minor point:

For some odd reason, FCC lists "80 meters" and "75 meters" in Part 97
as if they were different bands.

Really odd, in that the ARRL lumps them together as 80 meters. The
whole thing is not accurate anyhow, so I guess it is more by convention
than anything else.

Yup. Why FCC considers them different bands, even though they are
right next to each other, is a mystery.

I don't think we'll lose HF spectrum. VHF/UHF is what the commercial
and military folks want.

Agreed. HF "suffers" from unpredictability, or perhaps more accurately,
it's wildly varying characteristics. One part of the day, a flea power
signal can make its way around the world, the next part it won't. Then
the sunspots can do the same thing. Those are all the characteristincs
that we have fun with, but are really bad for the control that is needed
by other groups. I like to think about what would happen during good
propagation to all those competing signals.

There's also the size of simple, effective antennas on the lower
frequencies, particularly if you want broadband, no-tuner performance.
I saw a neat design for a 40-10 meter discone in the ARRL Antenna Book
- it's not exactly small.

What has already started to happen is lack of protection for licensed
radio amateurs. Look at the BPL mess: FCC has dragged its feet even
when documented harmful interference has been presented.

Politics always loses when confronted by physics. Even if wins all the
battles.

I don't know about politics losing all the time. If the licensed
services are not protected, all kinds of havoc can happen.

In the bad old days, 27 MHz was an ISM band, reserved for things like
diathermy and heat-sealing machines. I remember one case, here in
Philadelphia, where a heat-sealing factory's machines put a strong
harmonic right on the Philadelphia Police dispatcher channel.

Of course FCC was all over them in a big way. But imagine if FCC had
dragged its feet...

Of course amateur radio isn't the same as the police channel, but once
the camel's nose gets in the tent, things get very odd.

As for the bad behavior on 75, it is one of the reasons I sold my AM
rig (National NC-173, EFJohnson Viking 2 and 122 VFO) and focused on
CW.

What really puzzles me about the problem is this:

Several months ago, FCC widened 75 meters (and narrowed 80 meters)

That would be quite a trick! (joke)

Yup. But they did it anyway.

even more than had been requested. AM voice is now legal for US Extras
from 3600 to 4000 kHz. That's more space than any HF/MF ham band
except 10 and 15 meters.

Is there no room for AM in all those 400 kHz?

Not for the miscreants! 8^(

'zactly.

73 de Jim, N2EY

On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 08:50:33 EDT, wrote:

In the bad old days, 27 MHz was an ISM band, reserved for things like
diathermy and heat-sealing machines. I remember one case, here in
Philadelphia, where a heat-sealing factory's machines put a strong
harmonic right on the Philadelphia Police dispatcher channel.

The major problem with the 27 MHz heat sealers was the 4th harmonic in
the aviation bands. The local FCC engineer in charge had the legal
authority to shut the plant down immediately without a warning or
hearing and the plant could not resume operation until it certified
by measurement and an FAA overflight that the IX was corrected. The
necessary shielding to accomplish compliance is the reason that the
characteristic "heat sealer buzz" is no longer a problem on 11 or 10
meters.

Of course FCC was all over them in a big way. But imagine if FCC had
dragged its feet...

Even today, FAA complaints take first priority, but in reality that
was a different FCC... g

In my first year with the agency we went out on about a half-dozen
such complaints in the San Francisco area, but 30 years later when I
retired we hadn't received such a complaint in many years.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

wrote in
oups.com:


On Jun 16, 2:19?pm, Mike Coslo wrote:

some snippage

Politics always loses when confronted by physics. Even if wins all
the battles.

I don't know about politics losing all the time. If the licensed
services are not protected, all kinds of havoc can happen.

Then the politics loses. The world is full of examples where
politicians have decided what the truth is. I'll spare us the details to
avoid going off topic, but BPL, which is one really minor example of that
sort of thought, will almost certainly fail unless Amateur radio is
outlawed in all BPL deployment areas. While it does indeed interfere with
our service, we can inadvertantly shut it down just by transmitting
legally. I wonder how the customers will feel about losing their access
for large chunks of time. I really don't think it will ever get that far,
however.
- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -

On Sun, 17 Jun 2007 19:32:04 EDT, Mike Coslo
wrote:

While it does indeed interfere with
our service, we can inadvertantly shut it down just by transmitting
legally. I wonder how the customers will feel about losing their access
for large chunks of time. I really don't think it will ever get that far,
however.

If that were to happen, the BPL providers would exercise the same
"money talks and big money talks loudly" leverage as they have done to
get BPL approved, and thereby get the FCC to shut the Amateur Radio
services down in those areas, much as the Air Force (my pre-FCC
employer) is clobbering 3/4 meter band operation with their Pave Paws
radar systems.

My personal opinion is that BPL will self-destruct on economic grounds
if we amateurs can just hold out long enough.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

In article ,
Phil Kane wrote:

If that were to happen, the BPL providers would exercise the same
"money talks and big money talks loudly" leverage as they have done to
get BPL approved, and thereby get the FCC to shut the Amateur Radio
services down in those areas, much as the Air Force (my pre-FCC
employer) is clobbering 3/4 meter band operation with their Pave Paws
radar systems.

Fortunately, the legal situations which exist with regard to those two
situations are rather different.

w/r/t the PAVE PAWS radar systems in the 420 - 450 MHz frequency band,
the government radar system is the primary user of this frequency
spectrum, and has been for years. Amateur operators are secondary
users of these frequencies, and are (and have been) explicitly
required to limit use of these frequencies so that amateur use does
not interfere with the primary users (radar). All that has happened
recently, is that the government users have actually asserted that
amateur use _is_ interfering with radar, and that amateur users must
eliminate the interference as is required by the FCC rules.

In short, the Air Force has the law on their side. We can hope that
the ARRL's work to come up with a selective interference-mitigation
program will succeed... but if the Air Force gets snicky and insists
on a total shutdown of 70 cm ham repeaters near the PAVE PAWS sites,
they can make it stick.

The situation with BPL is different, as least as far as the law reads
today... BPL operators have *no* licensed right to radiate in the
amateur bands, while amateur users are either primary or secondary
users of these bands. The ARRL is making a pretty good case that the
FCC is ignoring both the law (national, and perhaps even international
law and treaty obligations), and their own regulations, in allowing
BPL operators to behave as they are.

My personal opinion is that BPL will self-destruct on economic grounds
if we amateurs can just hold out long enough.

Agreed.

The BPL providers have made big noise about how BPL will open up
broadband access to rural customers who are not now served by any
broadband providers. It would be amusing to see what would happen if
the FCC were to offer these providers the right to continue operating
BPL systems with current emission levels... but *only* on the
condition that the providers would agree to fund a build-out of their
system to cover 90% or more of rural customers. Imagine the howls of
"Oh, we can't afford that!"

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

On Jun 18, 3:56 am, Phil Kane wrote:


My personal opinion is that BPL will self-destruct on economic grounds
if we amateurs can just hold out long enough.


I share that opinion, Phil, as do most others in the telecomm industry
that I associate with. For all the hoopla generated from POTUS right
on down into the ranks of FCC, the stark fact is that real-live users
(notice I didn't say 'paying customers') of BPL number under 10,000
nationwide, and most of those 'users' are participants in 'trials' and
'feasibility studies'. After a half-decade of promotion, BPL has been
unable to gain economic traction in the form of 'production'
installations in real customer bases.

In five years BPL with be nothing more than a footnote in some telecom
technical journals as a dead-end technological curiosity which never
made a dime. Last time I checked there were less than 8,000 paid and
'demonstration' subscribers, and the number was dwindling.

Meanwhile every second issue of QST contains another confrontational
"It seems to us" K1ZZ jeremiad about BPL, we see ARRL President W5ZN
sending huffy letters to the FCC Chairman, ARRL has challenged the
Commission in Federal court, and now a ham in Congress is pushing for
a Bill to have a Congressional "study" of the matter.. All this over
an issue that is already dying a quiet death-by-apathy on the part of
the commercial telecommunications community.

I've spent two successful careers in professional telecommunications,
and maintain strong personal and professional ties in the industry.
Up until about 5 years ago Amateur Radio enjoyed a very positive
reputation among the "pros", but today we are mostly viewed as
obstructionist old coots without a clue, and it's getting worse.

This is absolutely the wrong time to be making enemies of the agency
which controls our service. Kid yourselves not, our Amateur Radio
service exists only so long as FCC considers us "worth the bother",
and the recent behavior of ARRL seems, in my opinion, deliberately
calculated to raise our "bother quotient". We should expect no
support from the pros when FCC decides they've had enough of us; in
fact we should expect them to cheer from the sidelines as we are sent
off the field of play. Recent news out of Newington portends to me a
hastening of that event.

73, de Hans, K0HB
--
{{{{* http://www.home.earthlink.net/~k0hb

In article .com,
KOHB wrote:

[...]
This is absolutely the wrong time to be making enemies of the agency
which controls our service. Kid yourselves not, our Amateur Radio
service exists only so long as FCC considers us "worth the bother",
and the recent behavior of ARRL seems, in my opinion, deliberately
calculated to raise our "bother quotient". We should expect no
support from the pros when FCC decides they've had enough of us; in
fact we should expect them to cheer from the sidelines as we are sent
off the field of play. Recent news out of Newington portends to me a
hastening of that event.


I am not certain of that. Sometimes, government agencies are not able
to give voice to certain positions because of political pressures from
elected officials and their temporary appointees. The 'work-around' is
to get some pliant non-governmental organization to give voice to those
controversial positions. It is a sort of 'good cop/bad cop' routine. The
ARRL has been the FCC's lapdog for so many decades that it is tough to
imagine that they have suddenly grown a backbone.

On Jun 19, 12:50 am, Klystron wrote:

The ARRL has been the FCC's lapdog for so many decades
that it is tough to imagine that they have suddenly grown
a backbone.

This issue (BPL) will collapse from a case of market apathy. ARRL is
squandering good will and good money on an issue that the "pros" in
telecommunications have already written off as a non-starter. We
should have saved our "silver bullets" to fight a real threat.

73, de Hans, K0HB

K?HB wrote on Mon, 18 Jun 2007 16:59:36 EDT:

On Jun 18, 3:56 am, Phil Kane wrote:

My personal opinion is that BPL will self-destruct on economic grounds
if we amateurs can just hold out long enough.

snip

In five years BPL with be nothing more than a footnote in some telecom
technical journals as a dead-end technological curiosity which never
made a dime. Last time I checked there were less than 8,000 paid and
'demonstration' subscribers, and the number was dwindling.

The June 2007 issue of the IEEE Spectrum has a Special Report which
is over-titled "By 2008 More Than Half Of The World's Population Will
Live In Urban Areas." Note "world's population," not just the USA.
That further reduces some (mythical?) need to bring the Internet-
structure to rural users, the popular rationale for BPL...as touted by
the
FCC Commissioners of the recent regime. Meanwhile most of those
"isolated" rural users are doing just fine with their POTS.

Here in southern six-land there is intense competition among the cable
TV providers to offer high-speed Internet connectivity (768 KBPS on
the
cheapest plan) using the already-installed cable TV "wires." Much of
the Greater Los Angeles area and adjoining foothill communities are
already so "wired." We don't need subcarriers on AC primary power
lines to carry even low-speed Internet.

Meanwhile every second issue of QST contains another confrontational
"It seems to us" K1ZZ jeremiad about BPL, we see ARRL President W5ZN
sending huffy letters to the FCC Chairman, ARRL has challenged the
Commission in Federal court, and now a ham in Congress is pushing for
a Bill to have a Congressional "study" of the matter.. All this over
an issue that is already dying a quiet death-by-apathy on the part of
the commercial telecommunications community.

Ah, but BPL very definitely remains a clear and present danger to HF
radio users. SOMEONE has to carry the banner of Forces Against
BPL. We can't ask the apathetic to do it...they have, well, too much
apathy to do it.

However, the forces that be at Newington are feeling the mortality
symptoms of their organization. They feel they must DO SOMETHING
now that they no longer have the clout with the FCC they've always
assumed was theirs. They may not have received an onslaught of
New Members as a result of the revolutionary effect of 06-178. They
seem worried, thus all the more reason to SAY something to prove
they still "have what it takes to lead their membership."

But, I agree with you that they've gone over-the-top in their
response.

Sincerely, Len AF6AY

On Jun 19, 8:48 pm, AF6AY wrote:


to prove they still "have what it takes to lead their membership."


But Newington (and the BoD) are not there to lead the membership
(memberships don't need to be led). They are there to serve the
membership.

In any case, engaging the FCC in court battles on hollow issues like
BPL neither leads NOR serves the Amateur Radio service. It needlessly
squanders what modest remaining remaining respect we have at the
government agency we depend on for our continued existence. (Can you
say "bite the hand which feeds us"?)

73, de Hans, K0HB