On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 02:12:43PM -0000, tonyestep wrote: | In general this is the case with any commercial product or service | that emits radiation. However, the FCC's intent in this case | apparently is to give power companies a free pass to radiate across | the entire 2-30 mhz spectrum, remediating their interference only if | those affected can win a court battle.
It's not *quite* that bad. The BPL providers can only emit so much energy -- and it's a pretty small amount, at least compared to our uses. If found to be emitting more than that much energy (which is probably quite likely to happen) the FCC is supposed to make them fix it. And probably will, but it probably won't be easy to make it happen. Hams have been dealing the powerline produced noise for a long time. How well it's dealt with depends on the power company in question -- some are really good, and some are bad and only do something when the FCC or local PUC gets on their case. And many don't have a clue what to do, let alone how to do it ... With BPL in operation, I'd expect a lot more of the `bad' ... | (Actually, the present BPL specs probably wouldn't affect RC planes | operating on 72, as no 72 mhz energy would be radiated by power | lines). Most systems being currently tested use 3-30 mHz. But most companies are considering extending the bandwidth to as high as 80 mHz to allow increased data rates. If BPL ever becomes popular, this is almost certain to happen. R/C is not `out of the woods' here, and I see nothing in the recent FCC documents that restrict BPL to under 30 mHz. | Despite all this, there will doubtless be some companies who will | try it, so a long battle lies ahead for those who oppose BPL. It is | very possible that some day the HF spectrum will be gone, filled | only with the buzz of radiation that would have been illegal until | last Thursday. Well, the FCC regulations have always allowed emitting a certain amount of noise, even in bandwidths allocated to other uses, and this is nothing new. BPL supposedly does stay within these rules (the BPL proponents tried have the limits increased for them, but I don't think that's happened yet) so the actual amount of the interference should be small. Alas, it's small compared to most things, but it'll be huge compared to most HF signals that hams deal with, and utterly pervasive across the entire HF band. BPL is a disaster for HF ham radio. However, I wouldn't expect BPL to affect RC usage much (even if BPL goes up to 80 mHz) -- it might create a zone around the power lines at the back of your field where it's not safe to fly, but I don't know exactly how large this zone would be -- it might be so small that it wouldn't be safe to fly in that zone anyways for fear of hitting the power lines. This would require some measurements of a BPL system in operation -- even if they're not going up to 80 mHz yet, one could probably extrapolate by testing 27 mHz equipment easily enough. I would have hoped that the AMA would have already done this, but I've seen nothing about this. | This noise, similar to what you hear on your AM car radio when you | tune between stations and race the motor, To be fair, the noise doesn't really sound that much like what you've described. The videos at http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/aud-vid.html will let you listen to it, if you wish. | shall henceforth be called "Powell noise." Cute. Sort of like Santorum. (If you've never heard of it, http://www.rotten.com/library/sex/sodomy/santorum/, though it'll probably offend some people. You have been warned.) -- Doug McLaren, [EMAIL PROTECTED], AD5RH FORTUNE PROVIDES QUESTIONS FOR THE GREAT ANSWERS: #19 A: To be or not to be. Q: What is the square root of 4b^2? RCSE-List facilities provided by Model Airplane News. Send "subscribe" and "unsubscribe" requests to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please note that subscribe and unsubscribe messages must be sent in text only format with MIME turned off.
