[TowerTalk] BPL: Presidential Backing

[Jim Lux]

Feel free to moderate this out, if needed.

At 09:36 AM 4/28/2004 -0500, Jim Brown wrote:
>On Wed, 28 Apr 2004 07:10:08 -0700, Marlon Schafer (509-982-2181)
>wrote:
>
> >Guys, what's part of the magic of being a ham?  Cheap real time
> >communication with others all over the world right?
>
>That's only a small part of it -- in fact, that part of it is usually
>far better on the internet. Much more important are things like
>studying the performance of antennas, designing and building better
>ones, studying long range propagation, studying and designing new and
>better equipment designs, testing and using them under real world
>conditions, etc.
>
>Some other key issues:
>
>1)  ham radio has historically been a (the?) major entry path for youth
>into technical careers. If that spectrum is unuseable, that limits the
>attraction.

This I doubt.  I think the major entry path for youth (today) into 
technical careers is a 4 year degree, inspired by one of the following: 
early exposure to technology; desire for a reasonably well paid career; 
natural aptitude; role model (parent in a technical profession, I wanna be 
an astronaut, etc.)

When it comes to actually getting a job, relatively few HR departments will 
give you any brownie points for a ham license (although it may help in the 
interview), ALL will check for the degree (or not). And, some hiring 
managers don't want hams, for a variety of reasons.

Yes, an early interest in ham radio (or robotics, or computers, or race 
cars) may inspire someone to go on and seek a career in the field, but 
there are also many, many technical people who never touched a radio or a 
soldering iron in their life (their loss in my opinion, but then, I'm 
different from most business people). My opinion is that whether HF is 
available will make almost no difference in how many people seek careers in 
technical professions.


>2) hams historically have provided emergency communications during all
>sorts of disasters, both natural and otherwise. If the spectrum is
>unusable, not only do you not have the hams, you couldn't use the
>spectrum if you did.

Unfortunately, the emergency response folks are also realizing that they 
need to provide their own disaster tolerant communications systems.  I 
suspect that this justification for ham radio is becoming less and less 
important as time goes on.  Hams have traditionally provided on-the-spot 
comm support for large public events (parades, etc.), but in these days of 
cellphones (particularly when a sponsor like Nextel provides them for 
free), the capability provided by a ham with a HT is not so unique.  As 
hams, we can take pride in having pioneered some of the early technology 
here, along with procedural things, and, probably most important, shown 
that it can and should be done.

Probably where hams excel is in the field expedient setup thing along with 
improvisation.   Large organizations have a hard time with this sort of 
thing.  They wouldn't contemplate having a written procedure dealing with 
stringing a random wire over some trees using a sling shot or a rock and rope.

The other area where hams make a contribution, emergency comms-wise, is in 
international disasters. The hurricane in the Carribean type scenario. 
However, you'd have a hard time convincing Congress or the executive branch 
that BPL would adversely affect this, since it's the guy in Honduras who's 
the essential link in the system, not the 500,000 US hams who happen to 
have HF capability and who might happen to be tuning around.  The vast 
majority of hams don't participate in this sort of thing.

Another ham area where I don't see it going away soon is the ham/missionary 
type thing.  Again, though, this is a tiny, tiny fraction of the US ham 
population, and BPL won't make much difference.


>3) Ham radio is only one of the services that depends on the HF
>spectrum that BPL wipes out. Others include international broadcasting,
>communications with ships at sea, and many business users.  One of the
>characteristics of the HF spectrum is that it isn't local -- it travels
>around the world. So the trash that hundreds of thousands of BPL
>transmitters produce in Chicago (or Washington) can pollute the
>airwaves in locations as widespread as rural Iowa, Ontario, Europe,
>South America, and Africa.

This is the real problem with BPL.  Not that it affects hams, who in the 
overall scheme of things, goverment wise, are a pimple on the rear end of 
an ant. BPL also affects a lot of big money industries (airlines, etc.). 
When it comes to putting in selective notches, who do you think will have 
more clout: ARINC talking to airplanes over the ocean; or hams wanting to 
"talk to the world"?  FEMA will get their notches years before hams do.



>Ah, you say, international broadcasting is replaced by the internet.
>Yes, IF you have the money to be on the internet, and IF the internet
>is viable where you live. But it isn't viable everywhere. More
>important, the BPL technology required to reach geographically isolated
>rural subscribers involves far higher power levels that produce far
>greater levels of interference to radio services, and at far greater
>distances.

On the other hand, most SW broadcasts are aimed at low-tech areas (Africa, 
for instance) (and, in fact, those originating from the US can't, by law, 
be aimed at US markets). While BPL will propagate world wide, potentially, 
I don't know that all those BPL radiators will make much difference in the 
noise floor in Rwanda, especially compared to the signal from the 100kW SW 
broadcaster with a 10dBi curtain array.  I don't see Rwanda rolling out 
extensive BPL very soon.  The broadcaster, of course, cares not one whit 
what the background noise floor is near his transmitter.