I'm Going To Own 3892! Place a Bid Anyone?

[WA1HZK]

I have been telling people for a while that commercial interests are pushing for our amateur spectrum on the basis that it is "wasted", and the usual response is "It will never happen".
 
Read this, and tell me if I am being alarmist.
 
From Bob, W1GWU

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-280520A1.pdf

[k4kyv]

I believe most of the pressure will be on for spectrum above 30 mHz.

The biggest problem for HF is incidental rf radiation from so much of the present-day consumer electronics junk.

Lately, I am hearing something about every 30 kHz throughout the region of the 160m band.  It sounds similar to the old TV birdies, and its frequency shifts up and down erratically.  As expected, at any given time, one of these usually falls right smack on 1885 or another right on 1985.

The nearest house is located hundreds of feet from my receiving antenna, so it's not like the guy next door equipping his house with CFL's or touch lamps.  Before taking any further action, I need to connect up a battery operated receiver to my antenna and kill the main a.c. power switch to the house, just to make sure it is not originating from something here.  Even such benign gadgets as kitchen appliances are more and more frequently equipped with computer chips, switching power supplies or other components that trash up HF.

I think the FCC and the industry already tacitly agree that interference is OK as long as local radio and TV broadcast signals make it through without degradation.  If radio and TV eventually go all digital, it will become much worse, because a properly operating digital signal is more immune to random interference than is analogue.  A friend of mine demonstrated this to me with his new digtial TV.  He tuned in a signal off the air.  In analogue mode, the sparklies from local power line noise made the picture almost unwiewable.  He switched to digital, and the same over-the-air picture cleared up to cable-TV quality.  The polluters will maintain that old fashioned analogue signals are obsolete and no longer deserve protection from interference, and that amateur radio operators, shortwave listeners and sky-wave AM broadcast listerers are such small fringe elements of the population that they likewise do not justify the expense of weak-signal protection.  And the FCC will undoubtedly go along with this; as a matter of fact, they already have with the night-time AM IBOC fiasco.

[WBear2GCR]

30 seconds after WiFi (how did it get that name??) becomes ubiquitous - and it will - AM radio and even FM radio will immediately become obsolete and go dark. No audience = no advertisers = close the doors.

We should petition the FCC now, in advance of that day, for the return of the AM band to amateur use!!  That and an increase in the power limitation. 

                       _-_-bear

[WA1HZK]

Sounds good. Write up the document, I'll sign it!
Keith
WA1HZK