Is the HF Band a Noise Wasteland?

Now that's interesting. I wonder, what part are cell carriers in the code? It'd be a hoot if they were Part 15 because then you could force them to correct the problem.

Damn it, they're 47CFR22. We amateurs are 47CFR97 and consumer electronics are 47CFR15.

But look at this:

Sorry if this double posts, take a look at this:

Isn't that essentially over water.

Around here the 2m club has repeaters on every mountain top ;-)

...Jim Thompson

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|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
         America: Land of the Free, Because of the Brave

Oh yes, intermod products are fun! Like I said in a prior post, BPL seems to be dead here in the U.S. because they realized that amateurs could essentially shut down their service.

Not to mention the monthly subscription fee that you're responsible for if you want your satellite radio to work.

yes, and I for one was getting my old AL-80A cleaned up with my loop wire just about 100 feet away from the main lines ready to blow that system all apart if it ever appeared! :)

--
http://webpages.charter.net/jamie_5"

Good OM, very good! BPL was a stupid idea to begin with and I think the ARRL also pulled it's weight in getting it killed in the U.S.

Even 75 meters gets some strange skip. When I lived in Ketchikan, AK, there were nights when I could work OR and CA with my 1/2 Watt pogo-stick when I couldn't even hear my friend less than a mile away in a right angle to the skip. At other times we even had documented cases of one-way skip.

I'm glad to see 10M picking up.

I was talking about broadcast FM digital HD, 88-108 MHz, not satellite. I don't like buying subscriptions to anything.

--
John

Oh ok, FM-DAB. I don't know, radio is far too laden with commercials lately for me to even bother with it. I do like the fact that they stream titles and other info to the radios that are capable of receiving it but I still don't want to hear inane commercials every third song.

I've got my iTunes library, Pandora.com, last.fm, etc. Matter of fact I've got Pandora streaming in the background right now. All music, no commercials. There are web ads but those are taken care of when you run Firefox and use the Flashblock add-on.

If that disaster is solar radiation, then no satellites.

greg

There are some problems but in most cases I find that natural noise still dominates over man-made noise. I did spend a good chunk of time tracking down noise-makers in my house, though!

The ARRL is fighting several up-and-coming RFI sources including Broadband over Power Lines (BPL).

If you want to go somewhere that you'll find stronger opinions, try rec.radio.amateur.* and rec.radio.shortwave.

But look back 30 or 40 years... back then sparking electrical- distribution insulators and the Russian Woodpecker were far worse than anything I have to deal with today. Wikipedia link:

I certainly cannot count the number of perfectly good DX QSO's I had going back when I was in Jr High that were disrupted by that damn woodpecker!

Tim.

You NEVER expect the Spanish Inquisition! - err, um...

It's NEVER excusable to make EMI in the HF band!

Hope This Helps! :-) Rich

Hey! We've got a local indie on 5, with reruns of recent old favorites, and news that's less biased than the biggies, and a _hot_ weathergirl. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

FWIW IIRC they appear in several places. Try Part 20, 22, 24 and 27

You may want to start here:

20 can be a lot of fun. I'm not active these days, but still remember my all-time favorite 20m QSO. It happened back in the 80s.

One evening, I was tuning around the low end of 20, just up the band from the pileups. I found a relatively clear hole somewhere around

14.020 or so. I was tuning up and down from that hole, about 1/2 kHz either way, just waiting to see who might drop in.

After a while I heard someone tuning up. Just a few seconds of carrier. As soon as the carrier dropped, I sent 'de ab9b ar' right on his freq.

I was amazed when he came right back with 'ab9b de 5n0sko 5n0sko 5nn tu k'

After our QSO, he worked four or five other stations, then went QRT before the pileup started. He was in and out in about one minute, and I never heard him again.

The best part? About three months later, I received his QSL card in my monthly bureau envelope! Definitely a new country for me. In fact, that was the only Nigerian I ever worked.

I was running about 50 watts to a double extended zepp back in those days.

That's a QSO I'll never forget.

(I had a lot of luck with that "seek, wait, and pounce" method. I always figured that DX might have the upper hand, but they're still hams. When coming on the air, the first thing we all look for is a clear frequency. I always figured it was productive to find a hole that might be attractive to a DX station, then wait for one to also find that hole. Sometimes it worked. More often, the station tuning up was a W4 or something. )

73,

Tom

Which is a respectable achievement !

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Best Regards:
                     Baron.

One over f