While the admin admonitions against "politics" are well-taken, the whole process of change will be inherently political. But it can and should
be done without denigration, including discussions within this forum, which I believe is the intent.
Human nature brings a certain inertia to the administrative state where the authority lies for the solution of these issues. One must get them
"interested" in the process first, and the NAB and ARRL are indeed the entities best situated to get the FCC's attention in the US -- if not
them, then who? Since electronics are a world market, the ITU and other bodies enter the equation too. Change in this realm is hard, but
please don't let anyone off the hook by declaring it "too hard" on their behalf.
On the technical side of things, the cheap switcher supplies now found in or on everything are some of the lowest hanging fruit. Part 15 put
down roots before those were ever invented, now the world is different, and it needs an update. Some ideas about switcher changes that could be
made (as in mandated):
Treat them as intentional radiators rather than unintentional. In other words,
assume they are going to radiate, no matter whatever else you do.
Allocate them some (= very few) frequencies similar to what is done with ISM devices. I don't think the ISM freqs themselves are good
candidates because of the QRM that ISM devices could suffer.
Put some strict freq stability and harmonic content limits on that radiation. So, instead of wandering noisy blobs, we have multiple, clean CW
carriers sharing a single or very few strategically-chosen freqs, and therefore much easier to work around. And they can put out reasonable
levels of RF on those freqs without it causing problems to others.
Pay attention to the conducted emissions, not just the radiated, and put strict limits on them, so that some load device receiving a "signal"
from a supply doesn't turn a clean signal into a dirty one and re-radiate that. Or, that a long power cable doesn't become a radiator outside
of the supply-radiated RF limits either.
Stop treating the supplies as "components" buried in someone else's hand-waving qual paperwork, but treat them as individual devices requiring
qualification before they can be used.
A lot of these supplies are based around canned chipsets now -- how can their designs be influenced to help mitigate the dirty RF problem before
they ever see a host device?
...
These general concepts can really apply to just about anything electronic, not
just switchers.
The low frequencies really are worth recovering, especially if we someday find ourselves without a functioning low earth orbit comm capability
due to military conflict and we need the terrestrial/groundwave bandwidth back.
Best regards to the group.
On 2024-07-28 07:57, Hare, Ed, W1RFI via RFI wrote:
<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.>
I agree. My comments were not intended to say that "we can't do it," but that changing the
rules is probably the most difficult – and time consuming – solution to change. As I
said, resistance will not be futile.
Rules changes will not happen until FCC believes they are necessary. The first
step in moving FCC to that conclusion is to make them more and more aware of
the impact of the present rules. With recent increased interest by OET and the
FCC Regional Directors, that process is beginning to bear some fruit. It will
take more.
Ed
--
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David E. Crawford
Indian River City
Florida Libre
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