>Karl-Arne SM0AOM >These radars are now becoming obsolete in Europe and are replaced with C-band and in some countries S-band radars Yet another hasty and not well researched statement! 23cm radars are increasing ! For air traffic - as S and C-band are prone to windfarms or loss of their own spectrum. Windfarm developers even foot the bill for new L-bands models For air defense and maritime (google Smart-L) For weather (EEES active) - the weather guys are deploying lots in both 23cm and 920 MHz for wind profiling Murray G6JYB
Interesting observation Murray, In the United States, the National Weather Service’s Next Generation Doppler Radar was having a hard time distinguishing between a tornado vortex and the rotation of large wind generator blades, especially in the Midwest, like in Kansas. Last I heard, they had reduced the problem with algorithms. Tom WA4ILH
You seem to know more about my client's systems than they do themselves... Many older L-band PSR:s in the Nordic countries have been decommissioned, and the jury is still out of what their replacements will be. Up to now they have been S-band (Thales STAR-NG) at two sites, one near Stockholm and the other which serves Malmö and Kastrup airports in southmost Sweden. The Swedish Air Navigation Services (LFV) has however tendered for some new 3D-radars, which may become L-band. In this case their centre frequencies will be carefully chosen to avoid the Galileo E6 carrier. The air navigation and radio navigation communities have become quite "interference-conscious" and are guarding their frequency allocations jealously. The whole spectrum sharing and interference questions for Galileo were the subject of a presentation some time ago by LFV and the Transport Authority at the Board of Radio Navigation, of which I am a member. 73/ Karl-Arne SM0AOM
If you look at the frequency allocations for Galileo, and the E6 carrier in particular, it appears to me that they could have left the orginal 23 cm band (1296-1298MHz) alone, to be used for narrow band amateur use. But I haven't looked at any allocations below the E6 carrier, to be honest.
This is the current trend: Corporations are greedy for spectrum, for themselves and for the mobile phones and id-IoT devices which they use to spy on the public. (Make no mistake about it: the European Galileo system will be used primarily by commercial entities, not the military.) What's more, these corporations want to build devices cheaply, without even the halfway decent input filtering that would allow allow other users to employ nearby spectrum. (Witness the recent debacle experienced by LightSquared here in the US, where the existence of GPS devices with pitifully inadequate filtering was cited as cause to deny the use of nearby spectrum for broadband.) For this reason, hams, along with the satellite industry and pretty much all other other spectrum users, are in their crosshairs. You'll hear more and more talk about a "race to 5G" (even though there's no such technology as 5G; it's all 4G LTE plus marketing hype), which will be used as an excuse to give more and more spectrum to the mobile carriers/IoT vendors. During this next decade, ALL other users of radio spectrum are going to have to fight to keep even the smallest slivers of it.
One anecdote: some 4G products don't live within the spectral mask that they're supposed to. In one country I'm aware of, 4G spilled across the 2 MHz guard band that the regulator had created and interfered with a terrestrial TV channel so much that stations had to be moved down in frequency. The 4G operators then had the nerve to ask the regulator to use part of the now-widened guard band. And the regulator said yes, demonstrating just how much clout the mobile operators have. After all, governments around the world are getting big money for spectrum from companies that can make enormous profits from it. 5G actually is more than 4G LTE plus marketing hype, but I agree that competition for spectrum 400 MHz to daylight will increase.
Another anecdote: In one country I am aware of, regulators assigned 4G LTE spectrum without any guard-band directly adjacent to the down-links of traffic-safety critical datalinks. Reportedly, the assignment was done by lawyers... 73/ Karl-Arne SM0AOM
Wind mills are periodic and filtering their power spectrum in the frequency domain is pretty easy. End of THAT clutter issue....
Its important to accept that recent planned grabs for spectrum are not anecdotal but concerted efforts based on the --observation-- that ham allocations are "sparsely used". What's shocking is NOT that these efforts have arisen, but that we act almost totally clueless when they come to light. If you want to save spectrum, you've got to show that the spectrum is being used and is NECESSARY for the Part 97 mission in the US. Don't kid yourself-- Do you NOT think the the drivers behind the wireless revolution are dominated by licensed hams?? Hams are the driving force for ALL things wireless, but our failure to showcase our talents and USE our spectrum are what's allowing this. Just look at the HF spectrum today, right now 90% of activity on each band is drawn into a 3 KHz 'channel' for FT8/4.... How do you expect those who side with us to explain and defend that? Execute MISSION. The ham allocations are not a national park for electron non-thermal bremstrahlung. They are assigned highways that need TRAFFIC. 73 Chip W1YW
The Europeans want their own GPS system. Despite it's redundancy. Why not use the system already in place? Ki4ax
GPS is fundamentally a US DOD property. It can be encoded, if needed, and even jammed. Having a non-Russian alternative makes a lotta sense.
There have been at least three reasons for the EU to design and implement Galileo: Galileo is a generation newer than GPS, and can provide improved accuracy and enhanced services It is under entirely civilian auspices, it is neither funded nor controlled by military interests Being independent, it may provide improved redundancy and resilience for critical functions It will however be interesting to see what the UK may do after Brexit, maybe an "IPS" or "Imperial Positioning System" could evolve. Karl-Arne SM0AOM 73/
There is a big point here... and I'll answer this with an anecode.... They say that if you put 3 Amateurs in a room that you will get 30,000 divergent views. Then a brawl will break out ! Most if this has come as a result of poor, short-sighted, individualistic people-neglectful leadership in AR. Most of this has been a result of the IARU just being a (member funded) cigar smoking talkfest rather than an effective international body - with a seat on the ITU and not just observer status - that can BAND-AMATEURS-INTERNATIONALLY into homogeneous blocs. Time to band together and WORK TOGETHER if we want to save both 2m and 23cm. Time to harness an effective invigorated IARU that can harness Amateurs INTERNATIONALLY to band together to work on and solve local issues... and not just international issues i.e. Some nations such as Australia do not gave access to some band segments such as 3700 - 3768 KHz ... soooo ... what about encouraging Amateurs to use band segments that Australian Amateurs do not have access to in order make this spectrum useless and unattractive for anything but Amateur use? Time to put the egos and self-interests aside and sack the cigar-smokers living in long-gone glory days. Its time to put in genuine listeners and people with skills that can advance or collective requirements. It may also be time to use professional communication lobbyists rather than thinking that we can do it properly ourselves... [ As to this argument: The answer to this issue is SIMPLE ... If AR Activities provide threats to Galileo then it demonstrates significant vulnerabilities of/to Galileo ... There should be technical solutions employed to make it more RESILIENT rather than able to be brought down by simple Amateur activities. I have used this argument REPEATEDLY in research that I have been involved with in order to protect Amateur Spectrum from (in particular) Defence interests ... and this argument WORKS !!!! ].
I agree with respect to spectrum above 400 MHz. Not much of an issue below that. I disagree. Whether it's cordless phones, 2G/3G/4G/5G, digital TV, WiFi, GPS, or Bluetooth, the push has come from industry and to a lesser extent from the universities -- but not from hams. Yes, some of those folks are hams, but only a small fraction. It's not ours; it's the public's, administered on their behalf by the FCC. We are licensed to use it subject to rules that can change at any time without our approval. I don't know that it's 90%, but it's a lot. At least it's innovation. For various reasons, the rest of HF traffic today uses the same technologies that were around in 1970 when I got my Novice ticket. There has been some digitization in VHF/UHF, but there is still a lot of wideband FM (and repeaters that get little use throughout the day). Those who would like to take 420-450 MHz are aware of our inefficient use of spectrum.
