[UK-CONTEST] PLT Petition

[Dave Lawley]

Sometimes items appear on here with an apology for being 'off topic' 
i.e. not contest related. I make no such apology in this case since if 
you aren't already affected by in-house PLT, you may well be soon.

In April the Government responded to the 'SaveShortwave' e-petition. The 
response is here  http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page19025  and it may 
appear to be the usual whitewash but it does say that equipment is 
required to meet the EMC regulations. PLT devices do not, so a new 
petition has been raised which is essentially asking Ofcom and BERR to 
do their job and take these non-compliant devices off the market.

GB2RS news this week refers to this new petition and encourages users of 
the HF spectrum to sign the petition 
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SaveShortwave2

A few weeks ago I was helping a new 2E0 set up his station is south east 
London. The ham bands sounded ok, just rather noisy as you would expect 
in a suburban location. I tuned down below 20m and starting abruptly at 
about 13.8MHz there was a high-pitched buzz, 20dB over 9 which extended 
down to just above 10MHz, stopped then reappeared a little below the 
band and continued down to 7.5MHz. This was clearly PLT and it rendered 
all signals in the broadcast bands and all other signals completely 
uncopiable. It was almost certainly raising the noise floor in the ham 
bands as well. It is a real menace.

Have a listen outside the ham bands for this noise. Don't be complacent 
and assume the notches will always be there but even if they are, PLT 
may be raising your noise floor in the ham bands. Please sign the 
e-petition and also consider joining the UKQRM group on Yahoo. Visit 
http://www.ukqrm.org/ - on here is guidance on how to raise a case with 
Ofcom - make sure they issue a case number - and they will get the PLT 
devices removed, replacing with either CAT5 or WiFi.

73, Dave G4BUO