[Ham-News] Amateur Radio Newsline 1379 - January 16, 2004

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Sat Jan 17 23:46:11 EST 2004


Amateur Radio Newsline™ Report 1379 - January 16,  2004

The following is a closed circuit advisory for Amateur Radio Newsline 
bulletin stations.  It is not necessarily for broadcast.

According to Support Fund Administrator Andy Jarema, N6TCQ, Amateur 
Radio Newsline has only received enough funding of late to keep the 
service going for another month or so.  In other words, the bills from 
last November have been paid , but now money has to be raised to keep 
from loosing the phones and e-mail service from bills accrued in 
December.  

Andy says that Newsline continues to exist hand to mouth on a week to 
week basis.  He says that It is up to you and the listeners to make sure 
that it is funded so that it can continue to provide this vital service.  
Otherwise he may soon be forced to pull the plug.  

Please help us to keep The Amateur Radio Newsline on the air.   Our 
address is the Amateur Radio Newsline Support Fund, Post Office Box 
660937 in Arcadia California.  The Zipcode is 91066.  Again and as 
always, we thank you.

That ends the closed circuit advisory with Amateur Radio Newsline report 
number 1379 with a release date of Friday, January 16, 2004 to follow in 
5-4-3-2-1.   
 
The following is a Q-S-T.  The ARRL Board meets to discuss the future of 
ham radio and lots of news on the B-P-L front.  Find out the details on 
Amateur Radio Newsline report number 1379                                        
coming your way right now.


(Billboard Cart Here) 
 
**

RESTRUCTURING:  ARRL BOD MEETS IN CT JAN 16-17 TO DISCUSS WRC-03

Look for some major changes in the structure of the United States 
Amateur Radio service to be proposed or at least put open to study.  
This as the American Radio Relay Leagues Board of Directors holds its 
first annual meeting of 2004 as this newscast goes to air.  Amateur 
Radio Newsline's Henry Feinberg, K2SSQ, reports:

--

What's to come under the ARRL Board of Directors scrutiny?  The ARRL 
Letter points to the big item being the implementation of  changes in US 
Amateur Radio rules.  This, in the wake of World Radiocommunication 
Conference of 2003.  

Among other significant changes, W-R-C 03 delegates agreed last summer 
to leave up to individual countries whether to require a Morse code test 
for access to amateur high-frequency allocations.  Several nations have 
already dropped the code testing requirement for High Frequency access.  
In the United States, the FCC last year invited public comments on 14 
Morse-related petitions for rule making, but it has not yet acted on the 
issue.  When it meets, the ARRL Board is expected to discuss in detail 
recommendations in response to W-R-C 03 that were developed during last 
November's meeting of the ARRL Executive Committee.  

Most observers generally believe that there will not be any major action 
by the FCC to implement W-R-C 03 changes until it hears from the League.  
This Board meeting is expected to generate an ARRL position that will be 
transmitted to the regulatory agency, but you will have to wait until 
the meeting is over and the League issues its own statement to find out 
what that position is.  We suggest you keep an eye on www.arrl.org the 
next few days for any breaking news on ARRL Board decisions.

For the Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Henry Feinberg, K2SSQ, in New 
Jersey.  

--

Among other actions, the Board also will elect members to the Executive 
Committee and appoint three directors to the ARRL Foundation Board.  The 
Board also will elect officers for the next two years.  Incumbent 
President Jim Haynie, W5JBP, has indicated that he plans to run for a 
third term.  (ARRL Letter, others)

**

RESTRUCTURING:  IARU REGION 1 TO MEET IN FEB

Meantime the International Amateur Radio Union will be holding its next 
regional conference in a few weeks.  Q-News Graham Kemp, VK4BB, is here 
with that story:

--

The Twelfth   Regional  Conference  Is being held from February 16 - 20, 
2004 in Taipei, Taiwan.  There are Working Groups, where most if not all 
the business is  discussed and these run parallel to one another.  A 
wealth of information is exchanged on the floor at these Working Groups.

There are formal discussion times and of course many informal 
discussions and gatherings such as over meals and receptions and so on. 
Contacts made at these conferences assist when an issue comes up back 
home, help can be sought on a first name basis.

There will be workshops on two important topics. The first is a  
Workshop on WRC 2003. It will include a detailed discussion on the  new 
Article 25. To facilitate the discussion, a paper by Michael Owen  VK3KI 
is being circulated with the Conference papers so that all  societies 
will be able to make an advance study and brief their  delegation on 
issues to raise and matters for seeking clarification.

The other Workshop will be on The Society's IARU Liaison Officer. The  
Workshop will help gain a better appreciation of the duties and  
responsibilities of the Liaison Officer and hopefully lead to greater  
satisfaction from the work carried out by Liaison Officers.
 
Graham Kemp, VK4BB, reporting.
--

More information on this upcoming conference can be found on-line at the 
Japan Amateur Radio Leagues website at www.jarl.or.jp/iaru-r3  (Q-News)

**

THE BPL FIGHT:  AUSTRIA TURNS OFF ITS BPL

And a big win overseas on the B-P-L front as reported by the ARRL 
Letter.  The Austrian Amateur Transmitter Federation says that a 
Broadband over Power Line  field test in the city of Linz has been cut 
short as a result of excessive radio interference.  According to the 
national ham radio society, the Government Ministry for Commerce, 
Innovation and Technology closed down Linz Power Company's B-P-L pilot 
project because it was generating interference on the HF bands. 

Shortwave broadcaster Radio Austria says the case that brought the issue 
to a head was a Red Cross report.  One that documented that emergency 
services radio traffic during a disaster response drill last May was the 
victim of massive B-P-L interference. According to the broadcaster, 
measurements were said to have indicated that radiation from the B-P-L 
system exceeded permissible field strength levels by a factor of 10,000.

Last fall, Linz amateurs and their national leaders got together with 
power company representatives in an effort to resolve BPL's 
incompatibility with High Frequency ham radio operation.  The meetings 
followed news reports of interference to emergency service 
communications and QRM complaints from several area hams. 

The Commerce Ministry Order not only means the end of the Linz B-P-L 
pilot project.  It also perminently curtails any future the deployment 
of this technology in Austria.  (ARRL)

**

THE BPL FIGHT:  PANASONIC TO INTRODUCE HOME BPL SYSTEM

A form of Broadband Over Powerline may be coming to a house near you.  
This as Matsushita Electric announces that it has developed a high-speed 
home power line IP networking technology capable of high-definition 
video transmission.  Amateur Radio Newsline's Bruce Tennant, K6PZW has 
more:

--

Best known for its Panasonic-brand products, a newly developed 
Matsushita Electric technology will make it possible to provide 
broadband connectivity to every room in a house via existing home power 
lines.  This, using an Panasonic branded adapter about the size of an 
audiocassette that the company says cannot be interfere with by radio 
amateurs.

The adapter contains a power plug, power supply, LAN connector and an L-
S-I chipset that converts broadband data  into signals that can travel 
over a power line.  The unit  connects a broadband Internet link such as 
D-S-L or optical fiber lines to the existing power lines in the home. 
According to Panasonic, a user simply plugs the P-L-C adapter into any 
AC power outlet to create a home broadband networking without installing 
new cabling.

The most interersting claim being made by Panasonic is that the new 
technology it calls H-D  P-L-C  resists interference from other signals 
such as those from ham radio that the company says often use the same 
frequencies as wired communications.  In order to realize this 
capability, Panasonic claims that it combined Orthogonal Frequency 
Division Multiplexing and Wavelet technology to reduce the noise caused 
by the interference down to one-fifth of typical noise levels.  This the 
company says creates a proprietary interference-resistant and ultra-
high-speed modulation-demodulation method without use of additional 
filter circuitry that eliminates the frequencies where interference is 
likely to occur. What impact that this new technology will have on over-
the-air radio reception by hams and other spectrum users is not 
addressed.

Panasonic expects to introduce P-L-C adapters for both consumer and 
office use by the end of 2004 providing that the HomePlug Powerline 
Alliance determines a final  specification in the summer of 2004.   An 
L-S-I chipset will also become commercially available at the same time.

For the Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Bruce Tennant, K6PZW, reporting.

--

Matsushita Electric and its Panasonic subsidiary exhibited this new 
Powerline Communications technology at 2004 International CES held last 
week in Las Vegas.  Both companies are members of the HomePlug Alliance 
which has been working with the ARRL to notch out amateur frequencies 
from its powerline communications signals.  (ARNewsline(tm), CQ -- from 
news releases)


**

THE BPL FIGHT:  W1RFI SPEAKS IN PA

Meantime, one of the leading experts in the area of Broadband Over 
Powerline interference has made his thoughts known.  Speaking at 
Frankford Radio Club meeting on in Philadelphia last Tuesday night, Ed 
Hare, W1RFI,  said that B-P-L is not good news for the radio spectrum.   
Amateur Radio Newsline's Mark Abramovich, N-T-3-V, was there and has 
this report:

--

When Ed Hare talks, amateurs and others listen. 

During an hour-long presentation at the FRC's meeting on the University 
of Sciences campus here in Philadelphia, Hare made the case that 
Broadband Over Power Lines is a threat to the future of the hobby.

"If these B-P-L systems came to my neighborhood, HF Amateur Radio as I 
know it would be over," he explains. "I mean S-9 on multiple bands would 
seriously cripple me.

Oh, we've had more serious threats when Amateur Radio was shut down 
after the world wars, but this ranks up there with it in terms of the 
potential to cause harm to the types of Amateur Radio that many of us 
enjoy doing."

The reason: Hare says B-P-L field tests by a handful of electric 
utilities use power line systems to carry high-frequency or HF signals 
to homes and businesses to give them connections to the internet. 

"My neighbor's computer system is a local interference problem," he 
says. "I'm not going to hear the one three blocks up the street.

But Broadband over Power Line, they're going to intentially conduct 
those signals onto the overhead lines that will run through my house and 
then they're going to build this as big as an entire neighborhood. 
Clearly it has a different interference potential."

Hare says he's charted the interference on 20-meters, calculating it on 
a national and worldwide scale should B-P-L be rolled out.

"The ability of HF to sustain worldwide communication if you have 30-
microvolts per meter of noise will not exist," Hare says.

He says the interference potential goes beyond the ham bands.

"This will affect military spectrum, this will affect international 
broadcasting spectrum, this will affect other government spectrum," Hare 
says. "This will affect commercial HF spectrum and as I tune outside the 
ham bands, you know what? That's not a radio wasteland, there's a lot of 
stuff there."

And, Hare notes, there's serious concern about medical-diagnostic 
devices.

"I go to my doctor's office, it's a house in a residential 
neighborhood," Hare says. "And he's going to hook me up to the E-K-G 
machine to find out whether I'm going to die before the end of the day.  
And, if that thing's interfered with, maybe I'll get a false positive or 
a false negative."

Finally, Hare says the amateur community is not alone.

"I'm very pleased to see groups like FEMA, NTIA and others getting 
involved with this saying essentially the same things ARRL is doing 
based on their work," Hare says.

"They, too, see a serious inteference potential to HF that needs to be 
addressed before B-P-L could ever be considered in any way."

For Amateur Radio Newsline, I'm Mark Abramowicz NT3V in Philadelphia. 

--

More on the fight to stop B-P-L in future Amateur Radio Newsline 
reports.  (ARNewsline(tm))

**

RESCUE RADIO:  NIUE DEVASTATION REPORTED BY HAM RADIO



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