Wireless Waffle - A whole spectrum of radio related rubbish

Antenna Plural Bugbearsignal strength
Tuesday 14 November, 2006, 08:52 - Radio Randomness
Aaaaargh... Why is it that so many people insist on using the wrong plural for antenna? It's soooo annoying. There are two plurals of the word 'antenna':

Antennas - a technical term meaning more than one antenna or aerial
Antennae - a zoological term meaning more than one antenna of an insect nature

Don't confuse the two! I often see articles where people say that they have erected 'antennae' at home. Really? They've spent an afternoon mounting insect feelers on their house? Interestingly the entomological community rarely make the same mistake. It's not common for them to claim to have found a new kind of bug with aerials growing from its head!

antenna

If you don't believe me, take a look at the screen-shot above taken from answers.com which clearly defines the two different plurals and their different meetings.

To avoid all confusion, try using 'aerial' to mean a radio antenna, that way there's no confusion as the plural is quite obviously 'aerials'!
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A noisy noise annoys a noisy oystersignal strength
Wednesday 8 November, 2006, 15:29 - Amateur Radio
anoisynoiseWhen I'm at home, my receiver is usually switched on monitoring one frequency or another, commonly 145.500 or the local 70 cm repeater. Yesterday I was doing the latter and it soon became apparent that there was some active tropogation around. In addition to my local repeater, other amateur repeaters from typically 300km distant were fading in and out with regularity. What I noticed, however, was that the audio for all these distant repeaters (and, mysteriously, the local ones too) was accompanied by a rather annoying crackle.

My first thought was that the coax cable feeding the antenna must have a dry joint in it somewhere and the gentle wind blowing it back and forth was causing an intermittent connection. But I checked reception of repeaters on 2 metres and these were clear of the crackling noise which indicated that the effect was real, and was being received right across the 430-440 MHz band.

The next port of call was the various items of household equipment that could cause such relatively focussed wide-band noise; thermostats, fluorescent lights, computers, vacuum cleaners and similar devices being the typical culprits. But wandering around the house with a hand-held UHF receiver, it soon became apparent that none of these were the problem, nor could the crackle now be heard at all on the local repeater, though it was still there on more distant stations.

Then I remembered the BMEWS radar at Fylingdales near Scarborough and Whitby on the North Yorkshire Moors. This operates from 420 to 450 MHz and is renowned for producing interference resembling a crackling sound right across this frequency range. Obviously the tropogation was carrying the BMEWS signal the 350 km across the UK to my receiver.

Having now heard the kind of noise that this early warning radar produces, it amazes me that radio amateurs anywhere in Yorkshire or Durham can use the 70 cm band at all, but apparently they do! But this isn't the only noisy noise that annoys users of this band.

On several channels (including repeater input frequency 434.600, 433.900, 433.525 and repeater output 433.050 MHz) in my area is the familiar buzzing of low-power, licence exempt data links. Such links are commonly used for cheap wireless devices such as weather stations, doorbells, key-fobs and more. According to Recommendation 70-03 of the European Radiocommunications Office (ERO), which details which frequencies must be made available on a licence-exempt basis in European countries, such links are free to use the frequency range 433.050 to 434.790 MHz (centre frequency 433.920 MHz) with powers of up to 10 mW. What a stupid range of frequencies to choose as this coincides with many 70 cm repeater output and input frequencies as well as common FM working channels SU20, SU21 and so on. One can only assume that someone at the ERO (an agency of CEPT) has it in for radio amateurs. Why not limit the range to, say, 434.000 to 434.500 MHz, frequencies which are rarely used.

keyfob womanRecommendation 70-03 largely prohibits the use of voice or audio signals in this sub-band, but that doesn't stop (cheap) equipment being produced that is capable of doing just that. And if cheap equipment is available, someone will buy it. Monitoring 433.925 MHz in my area yields what sounds like a wirless audio link being used to relay television sound from one room to another, as well as occasional walkie-talkie like conversations. But who is going to stop this equipment being used illegally like this? Ofcom? They can't even keep obvious spectrum miscreants such as pirate radio operators down, so they're unlikely to be bothered about people who are using voice in a non-voice band.

So can anything be done to recover the band for radio amateurs? Well the old adage 'use it or lose it' has never been more applicable. If the band were full of transmissions, the ERO would never have considered it for such low-power devices. But it's not too late. A good 20 Watt transmitter on 433.925 MHz should wipe-out key-fobs, freezer failure detectors and other mindless devices over a good few hundred or more metre radius. So next time you want to chat with a local amateur, why not go simplex on 70 cm on, say, 433.925 MHz just for the hell of it?! Antisocial? Me? It's legal. It's simple and it's worthwhile. See you on 70 cm then...

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London Airport Frequenciessignal strength
Wednesday 1 November, 2006, 16:47 - Radio Randomness
controltowerAs if this site isn't littered with enough useless information already, here's a load more. Having travelled to and from the various London airports on a number of occasions, I thought it would be nice to have an up-to-date list of the various air traffic control frequencies used at them (so that whilst en-route to the airport or waiting in the lounge I could tune-in to see exactly how delayed my flight is). Using the all-knowing Google proved rather confusing as lots and lots of differing lists appeared, so I decided to compile the lists together and then take a listen to see which channels were clearly active and which were now obsolete.

The results are posted below and only those frequencies heard to be active during random monitoring sessions in October 2006 are listed. The frequencies shown in italics were listed on a number of sites (sufficient to believe that they are for real) but monitoring showed that there was no activity, so they're listed just in case! All frequencies are in MHz.

pilotgirlLondon Heathrow Airport
Approach 119.725 134.975
Radar 120.400
Tower 118.500 (Departures) 118.700 (Arrivals)
Ground 121.900 121.700
Clearance 121.975
ATIS 121.850 (Departures) 128.075 (Arrivals)

London Gatwick Airport
Approach 126.825
Director 118.950
Tower 124.225
Ground 121.800
Clearance 121.950
ATIS 136.525

London City Airport
Tower 118.075
ATIS 136.350

London Volmet
Main 135.375
North 126.600
South 128.600

Other London Airports/Frequencies
Battersea Heliport 122.900
Thames Radar 132.700 (also used as Approach for London City Airport)
London VFR 125.625 (Visual Flight Rules)
London FIS 124.600 124.750 (Flight Information Service)

So there you have it. Together with a cheap airband scanner, you now have the knowledge required to depress yourself by listening in to flight controllers and discovering exactly how late your flight really is!
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ITU Frequency Allocation Tablessignal strength
Thursday 5 October, 2006, 11:39 - Spectrum Management
itulogoSomething that's always been a nuisance is that the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has made it's frequency allocation tables (i.e. the table which shows which frequencies are allocated to which services in which countries) something that has to be paid for if you want a full copy. The 'ITU Radio Regulations' is a large set of documents that describe radio usage and the heart of it is a set of 3 regional tables that allocate frequencies to specific uses and currently costs 252 Swiss Francs (about GBP107 at today's exchange rate). radiodialIf you just want to know whether fixed links have an allocation at 8 GHz in France, that's rather a lot to pay.

I was delighted, therefore, to discover that the Region 1 (Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asiatic Russia) and Region 3 (Asia and Australasia) information can now be access for free on the web-site of telecommunications consultants 'InterConnect Communications'. Their Electronic Frequency Allocation Table (E-FAT) service allows you to query the ITU tables viewing either the whole table or just the allocations to specific services.

A similar service, but only for specific European countries (well certain CEPT members) is provided by the European Communications Office (ECO) in the form of their European Frequency Information Services (EFIS).

Dead handy!
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