I hate to say this, but from Mike's comments early on in the BPL
debate, I have wondered if he doesn't have a conflict of interest
that is tempting him to be overly optimistic about the interference
potential of BPL. BPL would probably be a boon for people in
his line of work, so one might be hard pressed in his situation to
be dismissive of it if in the process you could be helping to shoot
down the goose that was about to lay the golden egg.
Mike said early on in the debate that we (the ham community) were
massivly over blowing the interference potential of BPL. I was
skeptical of that statement then, and even more so now. His
assertions fly in the face of all the credible analytical analysis and
a growing pile of empirical data. I mean how come Ed Hard (and
others) can drive down the road with a run of the mill ham receiver
and a small antenna and hear massive amounts of interference,
whereas Mike drives down the street with piles of "sophisticated
test equipment" and hears nothing? That doesn't pass the smell
test with me. And don't forget about the reports from NTIA and
ARINC. If BPL doesn't radiate to a mobile that is 50 feet from a
power pole, how come NTIA requested (and got from FCC)
mandatory notches for aeronautical frequencies and quiet zones
for radio astronomy? IMHO, either Mike is driving through systems
which aren't on the air, or are idling, or he forgot to connect an
antenna to his receiver :)
I heard of one case, where hams were listening on HF outside of
an apartment building outfitted with BPL. They started speculating
that the system was providing VOIP service because everytime the
phone rang in the apartment and someone picked it up, the QRM
from the system would go through the roof. This just shows that
these really small systems can be misleading about the EMI
situation if data is only taken when nobody is using their
computers (or telephones).
73 de Mike,
W4EF...............................................................
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Rauch" <w8ji@contesting.com>
To: "Alan NV8A (ex. AB2OS)" <nv8a@att.net>; "Rfi" <rfi@contesting.com>
Sent: Friday, October 22, 2004 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: [RFI] RFI vs QRO?
> > He said that he has driven through areas where BPL is in
> use, but with
> > his sophisticated and expensive equipment has never
> detected anything
> > other than the normal power-line noise to be found
> anywhere.
>
> Bullcrap. It would be nice if that was true, but it is
> really just plain nonsense.
>
> I watched a conversation and some comments from him on
> another reflector and there very clearly was a big problem
> with what HE was doing. All we need is people considered to
> be "experts" spreading misinformation like that and we are
> in BIG trouble.
>
> It's absolutely asinine to claim an RF source can be
> injected into the power line and not be heard!
>
> 73 Tom
>
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