[RFI] HDTV: Plasma vs LCD

[Dale Svetanoff]

Eddy,

Actually, an incident along the lines of what you say actually did happen to the FCC itself a number of years ago in the Chicago area.

Up until late 1999, I lived in the far NW Chicago suburbs and commuted to work in some of the closer-in suburbs.  Back in the mid-1980's, I happened to pass by an office building complex in Park Ridge, IL, as part of my daily commute and one day, I noticed a short tower had been erected on the roof of one building, around 3 or 4 stories high, as I recall.  Shortly afterward, a number of antennas, including a VHF/UHF log periodic, several discones, and a few VHF verticals were installed on that tower.  I thought it all to be interesting, but had no clue as to the owner/user of the tower and antennas.

The radio club to which I belonged at that time just happened to meet in Park Ridge.  One club meeting night, we had a speaker from the Chicago office of the FCC come and discuss various issues related to ham radio with the club.  That is when I learned that the FCC Chicago office had relocated from downtown Chicago to this office building in Park Ridge.  Disaster for them!

The FCC engineers had done an RFI study at the site prior to signing the lease.  The site seemed quiet enough for their purposes (the field office plus monitoring the local area VHF/UHF spectrum).  About 6 months elapsed from the time of the RFI study to the FCC actually moving in.  When they got the antennas all connected to the matching receivers, they got an earful, literally - all junk!

During that 6 month waiting time, a bank had opened for business in that same building.  The FCC engineers quickly found that the bank's Part 15 Class A devices were as horrible as any I've ever heard (while driving past banks and service stations).  The monitoring function of their new office site was laid to waste and they had to go find a new place to locate what would then become a remote monitoring site.  

So, while this was critical to FCC, it wasn't a national emergency.  However, they were done in by their own rules and regs.  I laughed for weeks over that one, until I realized that we taxpayers probably would be paying out even more money for the monitoring site, now that a separate location would be needed. 

Yes, the antennas and tower came down a few weeks afterward.  I never did learn where the new monitoring site was located.  

73, 
Dale Svetanoff, WA9ENA
Sr EMC Engineer
E-N-A Systems, LLC
Specializing in shielding applications, system grounding, and lightning protection


----- Original Message ----- 
From: Eddy Swynar 
To: svetanoff at earthlink.net
Cc: Cortland Richmond; rfi at contesting.com
Sent: 12/26/2012 10:01:26 
Subject: Re: [RFI] HDTV: Plasma vs LCD




On 2012-12-26, at 10:36 AM, Dale Svetanoff wrote:


Thank you for reinforcing my point about the FCC's deplorable lack of guts
and common sense with emissions.  The situation for TV receivers, plus the
general lack of radiated emissions requirements testing below 26 MHz for
Part 15 devices, sure does raise havoc with HF communications. 

One has to wonder what the story would be if the US was to ever have a
licensed, active ham as an FCC Commissioner (not likely anytime soon - if
ever!) who gets clobbered by garbage emissions from Part 15 devices in
his/her home or from neighbors.  Oh well, worth a few chuckles.






Hi Dale,


Far nicer---and it would surely drive the message home better than anything else---would be if some critical government installation happened to be located next to a suburban build-up, and having all its associated communications / electronic handiwork / etc. being interfered with on a daily basis by the imported electronic junk & gizmo do-dads that have run amuck in our consumer-oriented "Wal-Marted" society...


Why should such "...garbage emissions" affect Ham radio alone...? The reality of the current deplorably neglected situation would VERY swiftly come down upon the collective heads of the FCC (and our own Industry Canada) if some idiot addicted to watching Oprah on his / her plasma TV was to suddenly compromise the activities of some federal branch of the public service...


But, as in all things these days, "...Money talks & B.S. walks"---and the authorities that are empowered to protect us all have seemingly (and sadly) elected to "walk" away from their mandate & responsibility...


~73~ de Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ