"Frank Dresser" wrote in message ...
"Brian Kelly" wrote in message
om...

I'd be curious to know how vunerable BPL is to interference. I have no
doubt the BPL people have run tests, and I'm a little surprised they're
not
at the front of a webpage somewhere.

No sir, the BPL clods have *not* done much if any interfernce testing
wherein lies the underlying reason for whole uproar and is the reason
you can't find info on their "tests" online. It's all explained in
depth and well documented in the ARRL website.



When I wrote "vunerable BPL is to interference", I meant how outside sources
of interference would effect the performance of BPL. Sorry if I wasn't
clear.

No problem, I understood what you meant.

I still have no doubt the BPL people would test for things like
that. I wouldn't expect them to care much about interference, as long as
they can fit it into some interpretation of Part 15 regs. Or if they can
get the Part 15 regs changed. Or if they don't get caught violating the
Part 15 regs. I was wondering if there's any test results explaining how
marvelously robust this BPL system is going to be.

If you know where this is all explained in depth and well documented, please
point me in that direction.

From http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2003/08/21/4/?nc=1

"The League also noted that comments in the proceeding so far have
been silent on the interference susceptibility of BPL to ham radio
signal ingress. The League predicted that even as little as 250 mW of
signal induced into overhead power lines some 100 feet from an amateur
antenna could degrade a BPL system or render it inoperative."

I realize that this is not the statement about actual tests run by the
BPL people which you'd like to see, they haven't published *any* test
results at all, but the League technical guys are pretty sharp and I
doubt they'd make a statement like this if that didn't have a good
basis for making it.

And nothing will help as much as bringing new people into the radio
hobby.

By the time that might happen BPL will either have taken over the HF
spectrum or been forgotten as another idiotic and failed dotcom
maneuver.


BPL might very well fail. Or it might hang on in a few communities. I have
no idea. I'm sure, now that crackpot powerline schemes are here, they will
never really go away.

Heh. Yeah, the recent grid debacle is not setting a very good stage
for a huggy kissy relationship between the BPL types and *anybody*
else including the FCC. I've seen some economic analyses of BPL and
from the standpoint of an investor BPL is a big go-nowhere dud.


Far beyond the question of hams interfering with BPL comes the much
more important question of BPL interfering with the long list of
licensed incumbent HF users. Within that group radio hobbyists are
basically bit players. Smart and noisy bit players but nonetheless bit
players. Other users are *not* bit players and them's the folks who I
expect will quietly and decisively torpedo BPL.


w3rv

Maybe, but much of the utility SW use has gone to sattelites. The bands are
far quiter now than they were 30 years ago.

That's quite true. But we can't hear HF listeners and we can't
normally tune some modes but they're out there and apparently in
profusion. We almost didn't get any 60M band at all because certain
feds didn't want hams on "their HF frequencies". I dunno who they are,
those freqs appear dead when ya tune around. But they're there. FBI,
CIA, NSA, FCC, the military?


Of course, I've got my own
crackpot idea. The SW spectrum should be run rather like the way we run the
National Parks.

From a post I launched in RRAP on 8 Feb 2000:

- - - - -

W3RV
"There isn't enough bandwidth in all the HF ham bands combined to pull
off the kinds of ham technology development work we'll see in the
coming years, much of it undoubtedly will be done by nocode computer
jocks on the millimeter bands. Code tests have been a no-counter wrt
to "fostering ham radio as a tehnical hobby" for the past nine years".

K4YZ:
and that HF is for recreation, period.

W3RV:
"PRECISELY: If I had my druthers I'd have the regulation of HF ham
radio moved over to the National Park Service and let the geeks screw
around with the FCC."

- - - - -

Heh!

Everyone is free to use SW radio, as long as they act in a
responsible manner.

NO WAY!!

If only Boy Scouts could go to Yellowstone, only Boy Scouts would care about
Yellowstone.

Frank Dresser

w3rv