[Laser] Laser comm and ARRL?

[Glenn Thomas]

Hi all!

I agree. There should be more incentive to use the higher bands than there is. If you happen to be an ARRL member - or even if you're not - the person to make your opinions known to is the guy who can do something about it, your local friendly ARRL director (name and address on page 15 of any recent issue of QST).

I find the "coherent" requirement particularly amusing as I suspect that beam from a typical semiconductor or HeNe laser isn't even coherent a kilometer away. It's still exceptionally well collimated at that distance, but not coherent! How is a well collimated LED (which is also very monochromatic) all that different?

73 de Glenn WB6W

At 12:15 PM 2/18/04 -0500, Art wrote:
>Good day all,
>
>Some number of years ago, there was a brief discussion about petitioning the ARRL to update their standards regarding what they considered a valid laser contact was.
>
>For now, it's any 2 way contact using laser (must be coherent) light, not an LED or flashlight. There must be one electronic detection stage, and the equipment must be capable of covering one KM. For conest purposes, each laser Q must have a separate transmitter/receiver for each laser contact made (to prevent manufactured QSO's).
>
>Despite the tremendous availability of laser gear we have today, laser contacts during the vhf contest and the 10 Ghz and up contest is a pretty rare event.
>
>I live 90 miles from Mt. Washington (NH) and it is a favorite destination for rovers during the contests, but I easily work stations there on 2m. Yet, every time I ask someone there (on Mt. Washington) for a laser Q, they reply 'no laser', even though I know a few of them are QRV on laser.
>
>I can't say I blame them, laser is very time consuming (alignment/initial signal acquisition) and is a little more difficult to do in daylight. But, the real killer is that a laser contact counts no more than any other microwave contact-so there is absolutely no incentive for a rover to carry laser gear and to devote the additional time needed to make a laser Q.
>
>I'd like to see a laser qso with LED's count as a qso. I think that a minimum distance for a laser contact might be 5 miles-this would ease the fear among non-laser people that laser contacts could be easily 'manufactured' in great quantity. I'd like to see laser contacts score 10X higher than a 10 GHz qso as well, after all, these qso's generally take much longer to make because of the precision of the aiming equipment needed. I'd like to see Laser VUCC standards lowered so that 3 QSO's with surrounding grids counts for VUCC-after all, these contacts are much harder than microwaves.
>
>Does anyone else feel the same way? Does anyone know what the accepted manner to petition the ARRL to make changes regarding laser comm standards???
>
>Thanks,
>
>Art
>
>
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