Art Bell,Ham Radio,National Security

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gunsmith

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I was listening to Art Bell tonite on
http://www.coasttocoastam.com

And while I didn't understand the technical jargon, basically
ham radio is under attack by big brother and some multi national corps.
He was asking folks to contact Congress as these actions will stop amature radio operators from sending and recieving vital life and country info during emergency conditions such as terrorist attacks or natural disasters that might shut down other forms of communication such as
phones,internet and sattelite communication. Here are some links,maybe some one who knows a little more can pitch in...
Mods, Art Bell has been friendly to the 2nd amendment I hope that this thread is ok for THR it seems to be"legal and political" to me ...thanks!
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/HTML/plc/
http://www.arrl.org/news/stories/2004/03/18/100/?nc=1
http://www.coasttocoastam.com
 
ham radio is under attack by big brother and some multi national corps.
Click to expand...

I dont know what program you listened to but I didnt hear one word of big brother. multi national corps? care to elaborate?

ham radio is under attack by internet over power lines. new technology that interferes with the current band of ham radio frequencies. power and energy companies would like to have this but it would destroy radio communications for all intensive purposes. further more as is right now various pieces of equipment constantly interferes with each others operating frequences. when you go to a global scale it can be bad.

they mentioned other countries have tried internet over power lines and they didnt like the results and have either pulled the plug or are in process.

police,sheriff and fire departments have experienced radio problems from interference and are stepping up interest in such issues. Fema is highly against broadband over power lines as well.
 
Our hospital mantains a list of volunteer ham radio operators as part of our emergency preparadness policy. I havent heard anything about them getting shut down. In fact the only gripes i've heard from the die hard hammer i work with is that licensing is getting too EASY.
 
c_yeager
You are missing the point. It isn't about them getting shut down or about it becoming harder to become licenced. It is about the proposal to use existing power lines to transmit and recieve broadband internet. His contention, along with the American Radio Relay League and FEMA among others is that the power lines are not shielded and thus will emit RFI (Radio Frequency Interference). They claim that the RFI will be so severe that it will render radio communication on the HF and lower end of the VHF spectrum useless including the AM broadcast band.

"I've always beleived Art Bell to be a little "out there". Take him for entertainment value only."

Actually, when it comes to the technical aspects of radio communication, Art Bell is more than entertainment value. This is his profession and his hobby. He knows what he is talking about. And, he is not alone in this fight as has already been mentioned. Numerous groups are strongly against this and completely agree with Art Bell's position including at least one federal government agency and the largest hobby radio organization in the world.
 
You are missing the point. It isn't about them getting shut down or about it becoming harder to become licenced. It is about the proposal to use existing power lines to transmit and recieve broadband internet. His contention, along with the American Radio Relay League and FEMA among others is that the power lines are not shielded and thus will emit RFI (Radio Frequency Interference). They claim that the RFI will be so severe that it will render radio communication on the HF and lower end of the VHF spectrum useless including the AM broadcast band.
Click to expand...

So how does this add up to "ham radio is under attack by big brother"?

By the sound of things it doesnt seem likely to happen anyways.
 
The Ham/Shortwave community has been having Fred Sanfordesque "Big One!"s for years. The benefits of transmitting signals over power lines have immense potential for speed and cost reduction. Last I heard they had a problem maintaining a signal through transformers, but if that has changed this is very interesting.
 
First of all this isn't about ham radio although ham radio is affected. According to them, it will virtually wipe out any low band radio communication. This would include the AM broadcast band, various frequencies used for commerical and military aircraft communication, emergency freqencies etc. Ham Radio was mentioned, but this isn't about ham radio specifically.
I suppose the Big Brother thing refers to the FCC going along with this proposal.
I have no inside information, but this is supposidly being seriously considered by the FCC, so the chances of this are not remote.
 
The information about broadcast over power lines, BPL is in the radio magazines every month. The biggest concern is interference as described by others above.

The problem as most people see it is the age of the infrastructure in most parts of the country. Putting that sort of service over '40's technology like power lines is begging for interference problems like never before.

Remember during the CB craze in the '70's? Everywhere you went there were problems with consumer electronics and CB's. Sure, a lot of that was due to some operators running high power levels, but more was due to the fact that consumer gear is not properly filtered.

I've been a ham for over 20 years, and most of us keep extremely clean stations since we police ourselves. We take care of interference problems promptly, to the point of self-imposing quiet times so we don't interfere with neighbor's equipment.
It will be a problem if this technology is adopted without changes in the way consumer electronics gear is filtered / shielded. And most of us don't see this happening.
 
If it affects FM low band you'll never see it happen. The ground forces of the US military operate almost entirely on FM low band for tactical communication. A big investment is still ongoing in replacing all of the 1950s technology AN/VRC-12 series radios with the 1980s technology of the SINCGARS radios. The costs involved in moving ground tactical nets off FM low band would be enormous.

Jeff
 
Hey there, Jeff White: IIRC, The military was STRONGLY opposed to the break up of Ma Bell in the 1970's, but it happened anyway. (But perhaps your point was that we are far enough along in the military influence of America, that they won't let such a Snafu happen again, in which case you may be right.)

OTOH - wouldn't it be very convenient to certain elements to be able to block free civilian communication across state lines and national borders and have the blame fall on those greedy baddies in the internet corporate world and the short-sighted bureaucrats at the FCC?

Smoke- Don't do the baby-and-bath-water thing. Art Bell IS strong on entertainment value, and many of his guests are a continuous source of amusement, but there are issues that come up on Coast to Coast that bear serious scrutiny. Sometimes the village idiot is the first to smell the smoke.
 
444

Thanks for your help in elaborating whats going on,having never been a "hammer" I wasn't up on the info Art was talking about,but it certainly seems important enough as ham radio has allways been there when other forms of communication has been down and is a national treasure we need to protect.
 
Joe Gunns,
My point was that it would be a huge cost to replace all the ground radios in the military. I'm sure that the military would weigh in on that. I don't have any idea if that would be a big factor in the decision, but as taxpayers we all ought to be concerned. Who do you think will have to pay for all the new radios?

Jeff
 
BPL is going to do more than take out HAM radio. It will take out police, fire, medical radios as well as Aircraft High Freq radios (no more calling for help crossing the oceans). It will take out some VHF TV stations (ch 2 -6ish).

Don't forget, when ever a major disaster strikes, the first news story is about some ham that makes contact inside the disaster area.. HAMS are the FIRST contacts made when disaster strikes.

BPL is an idea that must be stopped before it kills lines of communication.

73's

KG6MSO
 
Jeff, you're certainly spot on about the cost to re-equip! And hopefully, that will be enough.

However, on the show the head of the Amateur Radio Ass'n stated that FEMA had made a strong presentation to the FCC about the interference with their point-to-point communications systems making disaster and homeland security response extremely difficult/impossible and the commission ignored their input. He also said that many of the FCC's own engineers have pointed out the problems to no effect.

The BPL (Broadband over Power Lines) system is potentially a huge money maker as the two-way-internet-connection-through-the-power-plug technology would make it possible for the smart chips in appliances, TVS, etc to report on personal habits. This info is of great value to advertisers, of more value than the revenue stream from internet access by home computer-users, which wouldn't be small potatoes to begin with. So there is some big bucks pushing this. (The more sinister element of certain smart chips built into household appliances having black capabilities for keeping tabs on what is said and done in house should not be discounted, either, IMHO.)

Apparently this BPL system has been tried in several European countries and they are backing away from it because of the interference problems. I expect that with the various non-FFC agency's growing opposition to this technology and the negative European experience will be enough to derail this idea. But, seems like you can't count on common sense anymore, so it wouldn't surprise me if we got saddled with it anyway!
 
The Big Brother part comes in when you realize that every electrical outlet in your home becomes a gateway.In or Out.Some of the tin foil folks don't like that very much.That toaster you just bought "is" really watching you now.:neener:
 
The most silly reason I have heard for the "need" for BPL is because everyone should have High speed internet. There are people who at the present time can't get it and it is up to the Government to make sure they can. What a load. If you want to get on the internet you can. Its not up to the government to do it for everyone. And with the results being what they will be, its not worth it. I've seen the videos of BPL testing and I sure don't want that.
 
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