The End of R/C

Hi, Herb and Paul.

Whassup?

Ed Cregger

WASUUUUUUUUUP!

Same crap, different day.

Sorry to hear that!

I would if there were a sufficiency of tossers there. In fact tho, most of the UK blokes

(a) have a sense of humour

and

(b) are not complete idiots.

Hi Ed,

Back on line after serious probs on my home built monster comp. After switching everything it boiled down to a defective Intel P4 3.0 ghz CPU. RMA's it back to Intel last Monday, it will be here sometime today. Presently working on my old Gateway G6-450 XL (circa 1998) sloooooow!

Other recurring health probs have had me lying low for a couple months, but just coming back to somewhat normal (for me) state of health.

Thanks for asking.

Best regards,

TNP:

You excepted, of course.

Glad to see you are back among the typing.

Ditto the health problems. I spent a week in the hospital in January. It's my own fault for having the wrong genes.

Growing old sucks, but it still beats the alternative.

Ed Cregger

Yea, right!

Geez, the hospitals are making some off us! I was in for kidney stones in Nov, then again for deep tissue infection in my leg the week before Christmas. They call it cellulitis. Must be a distinctly Brit ailment as several people here have had it but I never knew anyone in the US with it. I now have permanent lymph edema from the infection.

End of R/C? Pretty strong statement. Didn't the FCC say that the new BPL will not be permitted to cause harmfull interferance? They will either need to shield the power lines or operate at a very low power to do that. Actually I hope they trash our frequencies and force us to move to much higher frequencies.

Welcome back Herb.

I take it from the above that you are what, we, in the UK, would call a 'right Herbert' ? :-)

| End of R/C? Pretty strong statement.

Wow! Something on topic again!

| Didn't the FCC say that the new BPL will not be permitted to cause | harmfull interferance?

No, they did not.

Actually, the regulations allow one to make a little bit of interference on frequencies that are not allocated to you. Which is important, because just about every electronic device we uses emits RF radiation of some sort -- just hopefully not very much of it, unless it's a radio transmitter.

The power line companies have been pushing to increase the amount of intereference the power lines are allowed to emit -- I don't recall how successful they've been, however. But even if they're not successful, having every power line everywhere spewing into the HF band is a disaster for ham radio. And whatever the limits are, they're likely to exceed them in at least some places, and it'll probably be up to the hams (and us) to find these problem spots -- I don't imagine that the utility company will do a good enough job. In the past, electric companies have been very quick to fix RF problems caused by their equipment, so maybe they'll be fast to fix cases where they are exceeding the allowed power limits. We'll see. But certainly, they won't do a thing to fix cases where they're not exceeding the allowed power limits if they don't have to.

| They will either need to shield the power lines

You mean like replacing all the power lines out there with coax? Or did you have some sort of magic shielding in mind that nobody has ever heard of before? :)

Seriously, that's impossible. They could just ditch the BPL part and run coax everywhere and use that instead of the power lines -- that would be shielded. Of course, then that would not be BPL any more -- it would be cable. Cable occasionally creates signifigant interference, but only when something goes wrong. BPL would create it all the time.

Moving the electrical lines closer together would also reduce (but not eliminate) the interference generated. But that's not going to happen either -- it would just be easier to run coax everywhere, and that's exactly what BPL is designed to avoid.

| or operate at a very low power to do that.

Lower power would cost them more money, needing more repeaters and such. It would also probably reduce throughput and reliability. I don't see this happening.

| Actually I hope they trash our frequencies and force us to move to | much higher frequencies.

So you don't mind crashing a few planes as you (and everybody else) learns that the frequencies are trashed, perhaps hurting or killing a few people in the process? And then waiting a few years, not flying while you're hoping that the FCC notices that there's a problem and then again hoping that they allocate a new frequency band to RC? (And they may not -- remember, spectrum is gold. The FCC gets paid billions of dollars for frequencies -- do you think they're going to give us some easily?) And then replacing all your radio equipment to use this new band?

You'll have to forgive me if I don't share your hopes.

Still, a new frequency band for R/C could be very nice. R/C is almost always strictly line of sight, so the higher frequency bands would be just fine. And if done right, all equipment for the new band could be spread spectrum, removing the need for channels and channel control immediately and forever. (It would be especially nice if this new band was allocated world-wide, but I'm totally dreaming now.) In any event, I'd hate to hate to not fly for a few years while I wait and hope for this to happen.

(Of course, I wonder if spread spectrum really would totally end the channel issue entirely. As more radios were turned on, response times would go down for everybody. Hopefully the effect would be miniscule until the number of planes gets into the dozens, but I can still picture certain people insisting that everybody turn off their radio so they can have the smallest possible latency for their aerobatic routine.)

Personally, I don't think that BPL is quite the disaster for R/C as it is for ham radio DXing (yes, I'm a ham too) in most cases. But I don't know for sure.

Would you want to contribute to Dan's fund to replace 55 receivers and 10 transmitters?

Dan Thompson (AMA 32873, EAA 60974, WB4GUK, GROL) remove POST in address for email

Got it! Understand you are not welcome on the Brit group!

Dan has far too many toys! ;^)

snipped-for-privacy@cs.com

HEHE!

You won't believe this, but that is precisely why I was in the hospital - cellulitis that is. Diabetes/genetic related venal insufficiency. Damned near lost both lower legs.

I hope you have recovered well. I won't say fully recovered, because I know that there is no such thing.

Ed Cregger

"Sport_Pilot" wrote

I am not above using an outrageous subject line to attract attention to an article...

I am with you. Moving us to higher frequencies might be a great idea, once the agony of buying new R/C gear has been dealt with and put behind us. I also like the idea of spread spectrum, but not at a loss of rapid update times. I would think that this is the biggest problem to over come for such a system.

Ed Cregger