Dick you bring up good technical and adminsitrative examples. My
career too is in land mobile (public safety and railroads) and while
there is plenty of trunking and digital taking place above 450 Mhz,
there is also plenty of low and high band activity, and always will
be.

The ARRL seems to be doing a good job studying the BPL issue and
informing the ham community, but the public safety, industrial,
business, government, etc., users will have a louder and more credible
voice (safety of lives & property, commerce, homeland security, etc.).

I am wondering what the ARRL is doing to form coalitions with other
(non-amateur) stakeholders, and to build concensus that has a loud and
effective enough voice with the Commission and with Congress.
Politically and techincally, the ARRL and/or the amateur community
cannot stop this on their own.

73
Dan (K0DAN)


On 14 Oct 2003 20:42:09 GMT, Dick Carroll
wrote:

dt wrote:
Hams are not the only users of the affected spectrum. They may be the
most vocal, but perhaps the easiest to discredit or deflect.

What about the other users of the HF-thru-VHF spectrum? Police, Fire,
EMS, Federal Government, Business, Utilities (the power companies
themselves), Military, Aviation, etc., etc.?

Do they not have consultants who are in touch with industry affairs?

Does APCO (and other industry communications associations) not have
knowledge about BPL and a position on it?


Before I retired I was a field engineer working with a statewide
public safety organization which uses low band VHF for base to car
communications statewide, and that system is still virtually as I left
it nearly 10 years ago. I have learned that they are aware of the BPL
docket and filed in opposition, and have some idea that it will impact
their communications, but I wonder if they have a clear view of what
looms should BPL be widely implemented. While working I spent
considerable time on RF noise issues, and I am rather sure that such a
radio system cannot coexist with BPL.

What happens is that when the noise intererence reaches a certain
level, in a FM receiver the limiter saturates, and even a strong
on-channel signal will not cause the squelch to open. The reciever
remains quiet, and the call is unanswered.
I was able to locate one troublesome noise source which was reported
as repeater trouble in that the repeater would ocassionally go quiet in
mid-transmission when a car was calling in. By the time I would drive
the substantial distance to the repeater, a thorough checkout found no
problem with the repeate equipment whatever. After several fruitless
trips and attempts to find the trouble, I finally happened to be onsite
when the trouble appeared, and it was all limiter saturation. Looking
around outside while the noise was present in an attempt to spot a
source in the local rural area, I soon found it- an arc welder in a shop
several hundred yards away. When the welder was in use, the arc caused
noise that saturated the receiver limiter, effectively shutting down the
repeater. We relocated that repeater to a more isolated site where it
still functions as intended.
That example is but one case. BPL will, following power lines, also
follow roads and streets since power lines follow streets and
highway/road rights of way everywhere - the same places where police and
highway patrol units'communications are active. The interference issue
simply WILL cause something drastic to be implemented, what I don't
know. If common sense has anything to do with it, BPL will be sent
packing. Widesp[read implementation of BPL spells the end of lowband VHF
use by public safety organizations. And with states' budgets in the
deflated condition they are in most places, the funding will not be
available to replace those systems in the forseeable future.

I just called a former co-worker who is still working, and asked him
if the organization knows that there is a BPL test site in the state.
He said they did not. I suggested he might want to pass the word on up
the chain so that they might want to send a mobile unit into the test
area to get firsthand information on just what the effects might be. I'm
also passing along all the info I've gathred here and from other
sources. We'll need all the help we can get on this turkey.

In short, I'm coninced that while APCO and others may know
of the BPL docket I wonder if they have a very clear concept of
what it will do to them where low band VHF is used.
For instance, what have you heard from the state of Calorfinia, which
is reported to use low band VHF for their statewide Highway Patrol, and
has over 5,000 mobile units with no telling how many base stations?
I have heard nothing whatever from anyone there on BPL.

It seems evident that the BPL people are not publishing the existance
of these very small test sites any more widely than necessary. So, they
won't garner very many,if any, BPL-specific complaints, will they? And
they'll be able to say "We must not be causing destructive interference
since we haven't generated complaints". Of course limiting the numbers
of users in test areas to a very few drastically limits the amount of
interference potential. With so few BPL users online there *won't* be
much interference caused, thus few or no complaints. Then they will
conveniently pass over this fact, and the decision makers won't know the
difference.

Someone with clout needs to take them to task with the FCC and force
them to use much broader test areas with much more realistic noise
levels generated so that a more realistic noise picture can be
evaluated. As it stands, they may well get what they want by default.

Dick W0EX




What is the ARRL doing to join forces with other affected spectrum
users, perhaps forming a task force to promote common interests?
Lobbying senators and congressmen, the Commission, NTIA, etc.?

If the utilities' strategy is to divide and conquer, it appears they
are being very effective.

73
Dan (K0DAN)



On 14 Oct 2003 14:03:08 GMT, Dick Carroll
wrote:


W1RFI wrote:


You raise an interesting question, Carl. How exactly should the
average ham go about proving that the RFI is indeed BPL, when the BPL
people say
"That's not us!'??


In the case in Emmaus, the PPL rep told a reporter that Carl had misidentified
a "neon sign" (in a residential neighborhood) as BPL. First, Carl is
professionally adept with spread spectrum, so he knows what an SS signal sounds
like. The signal was heard only in the trial area and when I was in Emmaus, I
worked with a local in the trial area who downloaded files for me. When the
download started, the noise started; when it stopped, the noise stopped.

What really proves it to be not a neon sign, however, is that the time-domain
(oscilloscope) signature of the received signal does not have a pronounced
120-Hz signature. Had the PPL representative actually looked at the signal, he
would have known that his "explanation" was pretty transparent.

I have extended by email a very cordial inviation for the PPL folks to attend a
local club talk I gave; they did not respond. I then emailed a cordial
invitation to work with them on interference issues; they did not respond. This
boggles the mind, because if I were about to invest millions of dollars of my
company's money and a national organization came to me and told me that there
was a serious problem with the technology, and offered to drive over 200 miles
just to show it to me, I think I would spend the hour or two and take a look.



It's beyond obvious that the BPL people are adamantly intent on
stonewealling and bypassing ham radio and anything else that tries to
get in the way.
They're aware that many of the impacted spectrum users are so widely
scattered that much of the interference caused by BPL even when it
becomes widely implemented they won't be noticed due to their limited
exposure caused by lack of adequately close proximity.

Hams, which *are* pretty well scattered throughout the population,
should be ignored and their complaints deflected by such incorrect
assertions as the above "neon sign" explanation. Make it so that there
is so much question as to hams' competance to make such a call they can
be portrayed to be wrong, whatever the facts. It's obvious obfuscation
and an end-run around us, and whatever other protesters weigh in that
can be similarily deflected. They hope that the "serious" users of that
part of the spectrum will prove to be so few and widely scattered that
their protests will be few and managable.

And once BPL installations are widespread, they know it would demand
a clearly demonstrated, very serious interference problem to csuse its
abandonment, and they don't think that will happen. They maybe right.
If so many users sign on that the sheer numbers of BPL users overwhelm
all the protests of spectrum pollution and damage to communications
sheer numbers and politics will prevail in their favor, they believe.
All they really need to do is get it approved and "out there" in large
amounts in most populated areas, then the situation will take care of
itself, they think.

If allowed to proceed, BPL will forever change usability of the HF and
Low VHF part of the spectrum.