wrote:
From: "Jim Hampton" on Wed, Aug 17 2005 4:29 pm

wrote in message
Jim Hampton wrote:
wrote in message

Power lines were never meant to carry HF communication signals.

No kidding?!? From whom did you pick up that factoid? :-)

Y'know, neither were bed springs and light bulbs, but hams seem to
revel in the brilliance of it.

They're lossy at HF because they radiate! The whole concept
is deeply flawed. By allowing BPL systems, FCC is setting
a very bad precedent by saying it's OK to pollute the electro
magnetic spectrum with noise, even if there are viable
alternatives to the noise-producing technology.

A couple of points he First, the FCC does NOT "allow"
Access BPL existance. Access BPL systems are (note
carefully) UNINTENTIONAL Radiators.

Secondly, the FCC has never ever established any "radio
service" about or for any Broadband Over Power Lines
concept. BPL is a WIRED system; i.e., NOT an intentional
radiator of RF.

Thirdly, the FCC DOES CONTROL RADIATED RF LEVELS AND TO
ESTABLISHED SPECIFICATIONS NOW IN TITLE 47 C.F.R. That
radiation level HAS been quantified and put into an Order
that did appear both in the Federal Register and at the
FCC website under the Office of Engineering Technology
link. It wasn't under the Wireless Telecommunications
Bureau page nor the Amateur radio page under that (there
hasn't been any new link on the amateur page there since
2002).

The NOI (Notice Of Inquiry) of the FCC that caused this
recent flap and furor was NOT about the existance of BPL
as any service...IT WAS ABOUT MEASUREMENT METHODS TO
DETERMINE ACCEPTIBLE WAYS TO MEASURE THE RADIATION.

....to measure the unintentional radiation.

The OET knew damn well that BPL would radiate. But, they
could NOT LEGALLY STOP BPL from existing. All they could
do is establish a legally-acceptible MEANS OF MEASURING
THAT EXPECTED RADIATION.

Well, by limited interference, I am suggesting that BPL be limited as any
other unintentional radiator.

It IS. One has to scrounge around the FCC webiste a bit to
find it, but it IS there.

Oooh. Jim gotsta do his own legwork.

I do hear your point and it is well taken.
We do *not* need "only" a 10 dB increase in noise in general LOL

Nobody does, but it has happened. Listen to the "ISM" bands
and the DSSS and stuff there does raise the noise floor.
However, the occupancy of those ISM bands is nearly ALL that
mode and those users coexist peacefully.

Also, as we are well aware, no filter is perfect, whether a notch filter or
a bandpass filter or any other filter. Also, filters introduce distortion
into the signal.

Irrelevant. Those "notch filters" can't erase MOST of the
frequencies on HF. The "licensed users" and the UNLICENSED
listeners are spread over most of the HF spectrum.

Stopit with the facts!

So, it remains to be seen if the power companies can come
up with a BPL with very limited impact on licensed services. I do have my
doubts, but am only suggesting that *if* they can prove a system can produce
very low noise in the airwaves, then it might be worth a try. That is a
*big* if.

Many, many things ARE possible. The last 109 years of the total
existance of radio have shown that.

However, TRANSMISSION LINES of signals are technology that goes
back BEFORE the "birth" of radio in 1896. Lee de Forrest, the
inventor of the three-element vacuum tube, was studying
transmission lines academically before his "audion" experiments.
As far as our present-day technology knows (and that is
considerable), transmission lines with lots of discontinuities
will radiate; the TEM field won't be nicely contained. Given
that the ordinary 60 Hz power distribution lines are chock full
of discontinuities and changes in conductor size and spacing
(thus a change in characteristic impedance where that step is a
discontinuity), those power transmission lines WILL RADIATE RF.
That is inevitable.

IF and ONLY IF the electric power distribution system was
designed and REBUILT to known transmission line standards at
HF-VHF could such a wired BPL system be tried out for minimum
interference.

was not


Never happen, GI.

Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
In article . com,
wrote:

The "notching" solution is simple: Their BPL system does not use
frequencies that are also ham bands. Whether it works or not is an open
question.

But how long will that last?

Exactly.

Here in Israel we call it the "boiled lobster"
effect. A live lobster placed in a pot of cold water is happy. As the
water gets hotter it falls asleep. It never realizes it's being cooked.

There's a similar story on this side of the pond about a frog. Says
that
if you put a frog into hot water it will jump out, but if you put one
in
cool water and warm it up slowly, it will not.

Except that's not what happens at all - real frogs jump out when the
water gets hot enough.

www.snopes.com

This what will happen with BPL. By the time you realize that it's taken
over the ham bands, it will be too late.

The ARRL and others have made a lot of noise about BPL, and they're not
letting up.

That's why I'm boycotting
Google, they with two other companies invested $100,000,000 in BPL.

Does boycotting Google help? I don't pay them any money.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (077)-424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Support the growing boycott of Google by radio users and hobbyists.
It's starting to work, Yahoo has surpassed Google.

In article . com,
wrote:
Does boycotting Google help? I don't pay them any money.

If you click on their ads, you are giving them money. I discussed this
with the people who run eHam.net, and one of the things they told me
is that they could not survive without the revenue from "ads by Google".

Not only do I boycott google, but I boycott sites with "ads by google" too.
I do give them the courtesy of an email, but it has not been met with
great success as I seem to be the only one that cares :-(

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (077)-424-1667 IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838
Support the growing boycott of Google by radio users and hobbyists.
It's starting to work, Yahoo has surpassed Google.

Geoffrey:

Lean to edit your "hosts" file if you use windows. You can stop windows
from accessing the ads, and thereby anyone from receiving revenue from
those ads. (will also work in linux)

John

On Sun, 21 Aug 2005 07:21:01 +0000, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

In article . com,
wrote:
Does boycotting Google help? I don't pay them any money.

If you click on their ads, you are giving them money. I discussed this
with the people who run eHam.net, and one of the things they told me
is that they could not survive without the revenue from "ads by Google".

Not only do I boycott google, but I boycott sites with "ads by google" too.
I do give them the courtesy of an email, but it has not been met with
great success as I seem to be the only one that cares :-(

Geoff.

You can listen to the stream at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=4801446

I found the transcript:

Analyis: Utilities look to new broadband over power lines

16 August 2005
NPR: Morning Edition

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

There's a new broadband technology spreading across the United
States called broadband over power lines or BPL. It uses the
utility's electric power lines to deliver a high-speed Internet
access into a home or business. And because your house is already
wired for electricity, it turns every outlet into a connection
point. NPR's Wade Goodwyn traveled to one small town that's betting
on that technology's future.

WADE GOODWYN reporting:

Halfway between Houston, San Antonio and Austin is the town of
Flatonia. Population: 1,400.

(Soundbite of train)

GOODWYN: Flatonia happens to be where the Union Pacific's north-
south line crosses the railroad company's east-west line. A lot of
trains come through Flatonia, and to its amazement, train buffs have
started showing up to watch. So the town built a covered observation
platform.

(Soundbite of train)

GOODWYN: Flatonia's got many things. There's a huge kitty litter
factory, an even bigger cow main egg processing plant(ph), but one
thing it could not seem to get no matter how it begged was broadband
service.

Mayor LORI BERGER (Flatonia, Texas): We want to offer our citizens--
just because we're rural doesn't mean they're not entitled to the
same thing everybody has in Austin, Houston and San Antonio.

GOODWYN: Lori Berger grew up in Flatonia and now she's the mayor.
Berger says that having high-speed Internet is critical to the
town's future and she's betting $200,000 of taxpayer money on
broadband over power lines technology. And a big bonus comes with
her purchase because, in addition to high-speed Internet access, BPL
will give a municipal-owned utility powerful new capabilities.

Mayor BERGER: We would be able to read meters, water meters and
electric meters, through the system, and we'd know if there was a
power outage exactly where it was.

GOODWYN: Broadband over power lines technology turns the utility's
electric lines into a data network. So say if a transformer explodes
during a lightning storm, instead of sending trucks out into the
dark in a search mission, BPL software can pinpoint the blown
transformer. The utility operator can see on a computer screen
precisely how many customers lost service and who exactly those
customers are. Berger says this will be a major improvement over the
way Flatonia used to operate.

Mayor BERGER: We had a power outage about three months ago in the
evening, and I realized it was going on. So I came up to City Hall
to answer phones. So we sat here for two hours and answered phones,
trying to figure out exactly what line was down.

GOODWYN: Although city officials are excited about remote meter
reading and fantasizing how fast their reaction is going to be the
next time a big thunderstorm knocks out the electricity, it's the
new broadband connections that Flatonians are happy about.

Ms. CARLENE CARLOCK(ph): It's new for me.

GOODWYN: Carlene Carlock doesn't look like a great-grandmother as
she spritely moves around her antique shop, but her granddaughters
have been getting busy, sending her pictures of her new great-
grandchildren from locations far and wide.

Ms. CARLOCK: They're in Germany, in California, and my
granddaughters, they e-mail me pictures of them. She was just born,
my last. And within a day, I had pictures of her. So, you know, it's
pretty important when your great-grandchildren are that far away,
and I get pictures every week.

GOODWYN: Until two weeks ago, Carlock had to endure up to two hours
of frustration on her dial-up connection every time she'd download a
picture file.

Ms. CARLOCK: It was horrible. That doesn't happen anymore. I mean,
it just comes through real fast. Just blip, blip and it's there.

GOODWYN: BPL is pretty fast, four megabytes, comparable to cable
broadband. But the new generation of BPL equipment, just now coming
out, will boost speeds up to 90 megabytes, capable of video on
demand. Mike Bates is the co-founder of Broadband Horizons, which is
setting up the system in Flatonia. Bates says that BPL is perfect
for small-town America, especially towns which own their own
utilities.

Mr. MIKE BATES (Co-Founder, Broadband Horizons): With broadband over
power line, the real benefit is that they then can control their own
destiny. They can use what they already own, this utility asset, and
transform the asset and provide broadband in every home via their
electric outlets. So it's--that's what the promise is for these
communities.

GOODWYN: Bates sells the town the equipment, maintains it and then
splits the $25 monthly service fee each customer pays. It's all
pretty new. Word is just getting out in Texas, but there's one
groups that wary, and that's ham radio operators. Ed Hare is the
laboratory manager at the American Radio Relay League, the national
organization of ham radio operators.

Mr. ED HARE (Laboratory Manager, American Radio Relay League): BPL
that operates at the FCC limits can and does cause strong local
interference problems on any spectrum it's using.

GOODWYN: But BPL operators say they've come up with a technological
fix. It's called notching, and it notches out of the BPL signal that
part of the spectrum that amateur radio operators use. Mike Bates
says he's currently working with a dozen Texas small towns and one
rural electric cooperative in Kentucky, setting up their new BPL
systems. Like Wal-Mart before him, Bates is betting small-town
America is hungry for what he's selling. Only this time it's
broadband over power lines at everyday low prices.

Wade Goodwyn, NPR News.