The the lab is doing great for the resources it has. No question. No
complaints. Thank you!
While getting the FCC to change may be hard, I think we need to try.
Just because it is hard does not mean we look away. If we had that
attitude with the moon I guess we may never have gone there.
"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not
because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will
serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills,
because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are
unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others,
too." JFK 1962
This is the attitude that we must take. We cannot hope that individuals
will be able to solve this issue. It is getting to the point if one is
serious about noise that they locate a station where cities and towns
sit in areas where there is little activity. If you want to move near
Denver you will want to keep Denver and the suburbs to the west and
south as you want to minimize noise toward EU, JA.
I have to beam right over the metro area to EU and JA to some extent.
It continues to get worse not better. I am sure some fine OM will tell
me to move. Easier said than done.
We need to shoot for the moon knowing we might settle for less but less
is better than doing nothing.
W0MU
On 7/26/2024 11:52 PM, Dave (NK7Z) wrote:
I can attest to how useful the ARRL lab has bee n for me... I had a
long term issue with an indoor garden. I carefully documented things
to Steve Anderson's liking, provided both movies, and tapes of the
issue, including how DFing was performed, and with what gear. A
letter soon followed to the home owner, (it was a rental), and the
issue ended one day shortly after the letter was sent. After five
years of not being able to use 40 meter, I have now had five years of
being able to use 40 again... I can't thank the ARRL enough for
this. I was very reticent to contact the person living in the rental
as the place looked very sketchy...
73, and thanks,
Dave (NK7Z)
https://www.nk7z.net
ARRL Volunteer Examiner
ARRL Technical Specialist, RFI
ARRL Asst. Director, NW Division, Technical Resources
I never learned from a man who agreed with me. (HeinLein)
On 7/26/24 16:27, martin glazer via RFI wrote:
Agree.
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
On Friday, July 26, 2024, 4:22 PM, Hare, Ed, W1RFI via RFI
<rfi@contesting.com> wrote:
<Short rebuttal to long essay: the current rules aren't good enough.>
In general, I agree, but changing FCC rules, especially to make
unlicensed emissions limits more stringent, is not the best solution,
because it can take an incredible amount of time and the outcome is
not certain. I can say with certainty that the FCC will never set
those limits low enough to prevent all interference to amateur
radio. The political resistance would not be futile.
I could have written a dozen more paragraphs, but one point worth
mentioning is that we now have more interest by OET in these noisy
devices. Now that we have an inroad to report devices that exceed the
emissions limits, the Lab can and will do more testing, once they are
identified. And even for otherwise legal devices, the FCC is taking
some action wrt harmful interference. Both types of FCC contact and
cooperation will continue and the Lab staff will continue to work
with industry. ARRL is uniquely positioned to do both.
________________________________
From: David E. Crawford <dcsubs@molniya1.com>
Sent: Friday, July 26, 2024 6:56 PM
To: Hare, Ed, W1RFI <w1rfi@arrl.org>; Mike Fatchett W0MU
<w0mu@w0mu.com>; rfi@contesting.com <rfi@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [RFI] New ARRL Mission statement > Was solar fix
[You don't often get email from dcsubs@molniya1.com. Learn why this
is important at https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification ]
Short rebuttal to long essay: the current rules aren't good enough.
On 2024-07-26 09:06, Hare, Ed, W1RFI via RFI wrote:
First, with respect to noisy devices, there are FCC rules related to
the amount of noise devices can make. The manufacturers of devices
must meet these requirements and must use "good engineering
practice" (for whatever that means.) There are also rules that state
that if harmful interference occurs to licensed radio services
(amateur, CB, broadcast, business, etc.) then the operator of the
offending device needs to address the interference.
These rules are not intended to prevent all interference, no more so
than the amateur rules on harmonics emissions are intended to
prevent all interference to neighboring equipment. To achieve that
goal would require many tens of dB more suppression, adding
considerably to the costs of equipment (amateur gear and consumer
equipment.) The rules are intended to reduce the likelihood of
interference to a small-enough incidence of occurrence that it is
practical to deal with interference on a case-by-case basis.
(Amateurs that caused interference to nearby over-the-air TV
receivers, for example, had to add additional filtering to their
transmitters, even though they met the emissions-limits rules.) The
limits also ensure that if there is interference, it is local and
thus easy to identify, rather than possibly coming from over a mile
away.
It would be wonderful for the rules to be changed, but that would be
nearly impossible at worst, and take years of time (as do most FCC
proceedings) at best. The inadequacy of the rules is most apparent
in a few glaring areas. First, many devices are categorically
exempt from specific emissions limits. Conventional electric
motors, for example. More important to amateurs, devices classified
as "appliances" are exempt from emissions limits. This would include
devices used for cooking, heating, cooling and cleaning.
Also, interference is controlled below 30 MHz by setting limits on
the amount of noise conducted onto the AC mains. (The premise is
that small devices are not good HF antennas, but wires connected to
them are, and the AC mains are long wire antennas that can and do
radiate. There are no radiated emissions limits below 30 MHz and no
limits on the amount of noise that can be conducted onto other
wiring, such as speaker leads, interconnection wires, etc. This
worked, sorta', for most devices, but now that we are seeing more
and more digital wiring in houses and solar systems that have lots
of wires that are not AC mains, we are seeing the inadequacy of
these rules.
The ARRL Lab has done a lot of testing of devices and, based on its
testing, most of the devices that it has tested have complied with
the rules. (For reasons described above, interference still does
occur.) There have been exceptions. When indoor gardening became
more popular, some high-powered lighting was found to cause
interference. The Lab obtained a number of grow lights and tested
them. Some were found to be as much as 58 dB over the emissions
limits. (To put that into lay terms, one device was making as much
noise as 650,000 legal devices.) The Lab reported this to the FCC
and simultaneously contacted the major importer. The importer ended
up discontinuing the worst of the models and started adding
filtering to its product line. This was not an ideal solution, but
most of the interference problems did get resolved.
The Lab have also worked out a semi-formal process with FCC to get
interference to amateurs resolved. Although this has not been 100%
successful, I would estimate the success rate at over 90%, albeit in
some cases taking years to resolve. In this program, the FCC refers
all cases it receives to the ARRL Lab. The Lab takes some important
steps. It first determines that the problem would meet the FCC
criteria for harmful interference. Interference that is very
sporadic would probably not be acted on by the FCC, and a ham that
goes from S1 to S2 noise is still well below the median values of
human-made noise, so FCC is not going to see a rules violation. The
Lab has worked successfully a few cases that do fall into both
categories, although FCC action is not likely. (The position the Lab
takes is that if a single source of interference can be reasonably
corrected, it is reasonable to expect it will be. FCC has followed
up on a few of those cases with some letters encouraging the parties
to fix interference).
The Lab also ensures that the correct source has been identified,
following step-by-step procedures to ensure that a noisy device in
the hams' own homes are not blamed on power-line noise, for
example. The Lab has found that almost half of the reported cases
turn out to be something different than the ham first thought. ARRL
also determines that the involved parties have tried to resolve this
directly. In some cases, they do. So the ham must talk to the
involved neighbor, or to his or her power company or other
identified utility.
The result of the latter is sometimes effective, sometimes not. If
not. ARRL contacts the involved parties, with a letter written under
the wing of ARRL's staff-level agreements with the FCC. The letter
explains the rules and what needs to be done to correct the problem.
This is sometimes effective. If not, the Lab now has a
well-documented case to turn over to the FCC. The FCC Enforcement
Bureau evaluates the case and when it almost always agrees with
ARRL's determination, it follows up with letters to the involved
parties. So although this process is not 100% perfect, the League
and FCC are both doing quite a bit to try to move RFI cases forward
and resolving quite a number of them.
The Lab is just now in the process of developing a similar process
to be able to more systematically report noisy devices that appear
to exceed the limits to the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology.
In conjunction with this process, the Lab also maintains significant
contact with industry. The recent case involving solar interference
discussed extensively on this reflector is a good example. In this
case, Solar Edge did make significant improvements to its product,
resolving over 500 cases of interference known to date, this system
continued to make noise. Tesla was also involved, with the battery
chargers. At first, Tesla did not get involved, but, as a result of
communications from ARRL, Solar Edge and FCC, it ultimately sent an
EMC engineer to look at the system and an effective solution was put
into place.
As an aside to this, the League is also implementing local RFI teams
of volunteers, and supporting teams that have sprung up
spontaneously. This is being built into a national program and the
Lab may ultimately recommend that this become an official ARRL
function.
No, it doesn't stop there. The League is also involved heavily with
industry. It serves as a voting member on the US C63 EMC Committee
that writes industry standards often incorporated into the FCC rules
by reference. Lab staff are also involved heavily with the IEEE EMC
Society, serving as a member of its standards board, overseeing the
development of industry standards on EMC. These are not seats at
the back of the room. In my time serving in that role, I was
elected to the EMC Society Board of Directors and then elected by
that Board to be its Vice President for Standards. On C63, I served
as the Chair of Subcommittee 5 on Immunity. This work has been
effective, because for a number of years, interference by amateur
radio to other equipment has become more and more rare.
The League also funded a consultant to help the IEEE write a
standard on the procedures electric utilities should use to resolve
power-line noise. This standard is the first of its kind and can
serve as a model for similar standards involving solar-system noise,
for example. Std. 1897-2024 is now available from the IEEE and my
guess is that it will be widely adopted and used, especially if FCC
letters to utilities point to it.
So, the question was asked: When will we see the ARRL doing
something to address noise. This has all been happening for over a
decade, much of it reported in bits and pieces. So, yes, the
question is correct. When will hams see what is being done and
continue to support the continuation and expansion of these
programs. Keep in mind that most of this has been done by one or
two HQ staffers, who also have numerous other responsibilities, so
I'd say that it's a mean and lean machine doing good for amateur radio.
Ed Hare, W1RFI
ARRL Lab Manager 1987-2023
Current ARRL Lab Volunteer
From: RFI <rfi-bounces+w1rfi=arrl.org@contesting.com> on behalf of
Mike Fatchett W0MU <w0mu@w0mu.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 25, 2024 11:04 PM
To: rfi@contesting.com <rfi@contesting.com>
Subject: [RFI] New ARRL Mission statement > Was solar fix
The ARRL today release a new Mission statement. 2nd on the list is
protection of Ham Radio. I am very curious to see what that plan is.
Does it include stopping/reduction RFI emission from devices that
continue to pollute the ham bands making harder and harder for
people to
enjoy the hobby? Is that enough to get the FCC to start actually doing
their job?
W0MU
73, Pete N4ZR
On 7/25/2024 3:42 PM, David Colburn wrote:
You made it 'political'.
This has nothing to do with a constitutional-conservative
preference for
less government and more liberty.
It has to do with corruption by monopolies and the relocation of
funds
from enforcement to enabling-profit of corporations that donate to
the
Party-in-power. (Consider who that was for the past 16 years -
there's been
no push for "small government" for at least 12 of the 16, and
precious little
the other 4.)
If it were about "small government" the FCC would have a smaller
budget
and clearly-defined priorities - which would include keeping the
spectrum
clean.
IMHO, YMMV ... KD4E
On 7/25/24 14:22, David Eckhardt wrote:
They're gone in the name of "small government".
I do not consider this political, please, it's reality.
I'll attempt to keep my fingers off the keyboard in the future
addressing
this issue.
Dave - WØLEV
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David E. Crawford
Indian River City
Florida Libre
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