On May 14, 2007, at 2:13 PM, Rick Parrish wrote: > Chuck Kelsey wrote: >> That's not the way it's going to work. Remember, amateur radio is a >> secondary user on this band and the federal government is the primary >> user. If we make too big of a fuss, we could loose it all. > I understand you. My point is ... this is military hardware where > people's lives are at stake. If 50 or so watts is all the enemy > needs to > render the equipment useless ... it shouldn't be used for this > application.
Chuck, A conversation I had with some folks who really understand RADAR systems, led to an interesting theory... PAVE-PAWS is probably trying to see/track some VERY small targets, if local UHF repeaters are bothering them. The best scientifically-based theory we came up with off-line, was that the bits and pieces of the results of the Chinese testing their anti-satellite technology against their own bird recently, created so much on-orbit crap and debris, that every available resource that can "see" those bits and chunks -- which are all very dangerous to other satellites and launches, as all on-orbit debris is -- that systems like PAVE-PAWS are being pushed to their limits to see all of it. We may have the Chinese government to "thank" for the recent need to enforce (the rules aren't new) the ERP rules near the RADAR sites. Seems reasonable to me, after thinking about it. And just weird enough to have a ring of truth, considering the strange things that happen in the world. The only unreasonable part of those rules is the complete coverage by those ERP rules of ALL of Arizona... that is probably excessive. But there haven't been reports of it being enforced there, yet. -- Nate Duehr - WY0X
