[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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