No Wi-Fi Around Huge Radio Telescope 224
Posted
by
Soulskill
from the makes-a-strange-sort-of-sense dept.
from the makes-a-strange-sort-of-sense dept.
JG0LD writes "Students at a tiny Appalachian public school can't use Wi-Fi because any such network can throw the radio equivalent of a monkey wrench into a gigantic super-sensitive radio telescope just up the road. GBT's extraordinary sensitivity means that it's very susceptible to human-generated radio interference, according to site interference protection engineer Carla Beaudet. 'If there was no dirt between us and the transmitter, a typical access point ... would have to be on the order of 1,000,000 km [more than 620,000 miles, or about two and a half times the distance from the Earth to the Moon] distant to not interfere. Fortunately, we have mountains around us which provide lots of attenuation, so we're not seeing everything from everywhere,' she said. A standard Wi-Fi access point would wipe out a significant range of usable frequencies for the observatory. 'It simply ruins the spectrum for observations from 2400-2483.5MHz and from 5725-5875MHz for observational purposes,' wrote Beaudet."
This is news? (Score:5, Informative)
The National Radio Quiet Zone has been there since 1958 [nrao.edu]. It's not like it was just discovered yesterday. People living in this zone have always had to live without radio transmitters. Not having 802.11 is just another of the services they cannot use, like wireless garage-door openers and cell phones.
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Maybe they could build a Faraday fence between the school and the radio telescopes. Of course the wack jobs that claim to be em sensitive love this place.
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
maybe this would be a good solution http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/08/02/1322201/800mbps-wireless-network-made-with-led-light-bulbs [slashdot.org]
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've visited the GBT while it was under construction at the NRAO; there's another interesting feature of the site due to the location being surrounded by mountains -- which is that thunder from lightning strikes take a long time to dissipate, because they reverberate between the mountains. It's reallly something to listen to -- the rumble after the initial thunderclap lasts for about 20 to 30 seconds. :-) Somehow it's like a symphony to the soul.
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please tell me what civilian devices operated at 2GHz+ in 1958
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Microwave ovens.
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Microwave ovens.
Long-distance microwave telephone replays (AT&T)?
Commercial airliner radar domes?
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A little earlier, I think. My college dorm got one in the middle of the '70s, and I think it was only around $500.
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Ah that's where it is, I was just about to say "whoever got there second was dumb to build there and is causing the problem."
You'd figure that as an international sanctuary for the "radio-sensitive" nutbags, there would be no trouble selling real estate and moving away.
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Informative)
There is a Naval listening station nearby in Sugar Grove, WV. That location was chosen because of the way radio waves reflected off the moon and a few other things. It is essentially a focal point if you want to listen in to Moscow.
The observatory was a bonus.
And back when the zone was created the operation of radio transmitters by the general public was minimal and restricted to pretty much HAM Radio. And there weren't a lot of those guys in the area to begin with.
In short, it was a good spot and they weren't infringing on anyone at the time.
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Interesting)
That location was chosen because of the way radio waves reflected off the moon and a few other things. It is essentially a focal point if you want to listen in to Moscow.
How does that work, the moon not being geo-stationary and all?
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it is H.A.M. - Humdrum Aged Males
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That's funny, because when I got my license, a 9-year-old girl was getting hers as well.
She kicked our asses, incidentally.
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your very exceptional case proves the rule. The internet didn't kill amateur radio, the Elmers did.
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Wv is hardly an urban mega center
I'm sure people can find a place to live if wifi is that big a deal for them
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Insightful)
> That is a serious infringement of Liberty, IMHO.
Your liberty does not include the right to spray your rf all over my land.
> If the federal government wants to setup a radio free
> zone, they should do it on government owned land.
Read the FCC regs. WiFi on those frequencies is explicitly authorized on a "no interference" basis. If an authorized user complains that you are interfering you must shut down.
> It doesnt surprise me that the zone was setup in the
> 'government can do no wrong' 1950's.
You write this while putting up with the DHS and a president who claims the right to assassinate US citizens? You don't know what you are talking about.
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Interesting)
> That is a serious infringement of Liberty, IMHO.
Your liberty does not include the right to spray your rf all over my land.
Actually in most places, it does, at least for Ham Radio operators, CB, Family Radio systems, wireless intercoms,and Wifi. However as you mentioned, these liberties also come with the restriction that the transmission not interfere with other frequencies -- thus we can give you our RF, but you should never notice.
There's one catch, though: modern TVs lack an input filter that they're supposed to have by design which would normally reject non-TV frequencies, because they're suppposed to be tolerant of out-of-band signals. TV manufacturers got permission not to ship this filter, because most TVs are hooked up to Cable where it isn't needed. However in the cases where a neighbor of a Ham is receiving broadcast TV, the TV can be desensed due to the lack of the filter and the close proximity of the transmitting Ham station. In those cases filtering needs to be added back to the TV to isolate it from the Ham transmissions -- it's my understandnig that this filter can be provided by the TV manufacturer upon request.
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Informative)
However as you mentioned, these liberties also come with the restriction that the transmission not interfere with other frequencies --
Not entirely accurate. Some radio users are primary licensees. That means they get to interfere with everyone else. Not malicious or deliberate, but if there is interference it is the secondary, tertiary, or unlicensed users who have to put up with it.
FRS, wireless baby monitors, and wifi are all unlicensed devices, and as such any interference to them from licensed users is too bad, so sad, but more important, any interference they CAUSE to licensed users is "shut it off" notice time.
That's why people who have unlicensed garage door openers can't sue anyone when Air Force 1 stops them from working.
There's one catch, though: modern TVs lack an input filter that they're supposed to have by design which would normally reject non-TV frequencies,
If they are lacking the filter, then they were designed that way. Those devices are FCC approved and certificated, and if they were designed and tested for compliance with the filter but are being built without it, they are in violation of federal law (47CFR15) and can be confiscated and destroyed.
In those cases filtering needs to be added back to the TV to isolate it from the Ham transmissions -- it's my understandnig that this filter can be provided by the TV manufacturer upon request.
Since it is not really part of the design, and the manual for the TV clearly states that this device must accept interference (as part of the Part 15 Class B conformance statement), probably not. I think you can find commercial filters to use in this case, but the TV owner is stuck paying for them. And good operating practice says that the ham is not going to touch the TV to try to fix it, otherwise he becomes liable for any perceived failures of that TV. "Hey, the day after you installed your filter to stop your interference, the TV stopped working altogether, and I'm suing you, you basterd."
And, sadly, most of the interference issues would not be solved by installing a filter on the antenna, since a lot of the interference issues comes from modern, cheap ass plastic housings on the low price consumer equipment. You can't stop an interfering signal that is leaking into the electronics through the side of the TV by installing a filter on the antenna lead. You need to install shielding on the TV itself.
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There's one catch, though: modern TVs lack an input filter that they're supposed to have by design which would normally reject non-TV frequencies,
If they are lacking the filter, then they were designed that way. Those devices are FCC approved and certificated, and if they were designed and tested for compliance with the filter but are being built without it, they are in violation of federal law (47CFR15) and can be confiscated and destroyed.
Designed and tested with the filter, shipped without it because they're expected to be connected to Cable, AFAIK. As for confiscation/destruction, I don't think that's realistic, regardless of whether that's what's "on paper".
In those cases filtering needs to be added back to the TV to isolate it from the Ham transmissions -- it's my understandnig that this filter can be provided by the TV manufacturer upon request.
Since it is not really part of the design, and the manual for the TV clearly states that this device must accept interference (as part of the Part 15 Class B conformance statement), probably not. I think you can find commercial filters to use in this case, but the TV owner is stuck paying for them. And good operating practice says that the ham is not going to touch the TV to try to fix it, otherwise he becomes liable for any perceived failures of that TV. "Hey, the day after you installed your filter to stop your interference, the TV stopped working altogether, and I'm suing you, you basterd."
And, sadly, most of the interference issues would not be solved by installing a filter on the antenna,
That wouldn't help at all because the issue is the TV being desensitized by a signal that is out-of-band for TV, but in-band for Ham radio. You cannot filter out the signal that you're trying to transmit, as that defeats the purpose.
since a lot of the interference issues comes from modern, cheap ass plastic housings on the low price consumer equipment. You can't stop an interfering signal that is leaking into the electronics through the side of the TV by installing a filter on the antenna lead. You need to install shielding on the TV itself.
Well, no, not in this case -- remember, we're talki
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Read the FCC regs. No one is authorized to complain, and you must accept interference. Don't know if the zone trumps that, but you're telling me that no plane with WiFi flies within 200 miles? There's BS here, somewhere.
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Why should anyone sacrifice and have to endure the terrible burden of having to use a cord, simply in the name of scientific advancement.
Next thing you'll tell me is that I'm not allowed to setup my own transmitters and blast white noise across commerical radio frequencies.
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Informative)
Besides, the map shows that the quiet zone is more or less centered in the George Washington National forest, which makes it government owned land.
Re:This is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
And besides, if someone can figure out a way to make wifi signals stop at their own property boundaries, I'm sure that an exception can be made.
This is no difference from other types of interference. You do not have the right to broadcast your music loudly either if the neighbors complain and no one sober treats this as an infringement of liberty. If you stand naked on the roof of your house so that light waves travel over to the neighbors who can see you, then you will also find yourself from being restricted from transmitting those lightwaves (which you can solve by putting up opaque light wave blockers called walls).
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That is a serious infringement of Liberty, IMHO. If the federal government wants to setup a radio free zone, they should do it on government owned land. (please dont go of the deep end about eminent domain). It doesnt surprise me that the zone was setup in the 'government can do no wrong' 1950's.
Pocohontas County is at present sparsely populated. In 1958, it was even less so aside from all these wireless technologies existing. If you've driven through Green Bank, you'll see there's not much to it; I know, I grew up a mere 30 minutes north of there and passed through less than a week ago. The NRAO is life support in that area. If you take it out of the equation, the local populace would drop and businesses would close. Aside from Cass Scenic Railroad (EVIL coal fired steam engines killing the enviro
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As an aside, its a facinating place to visit. They had a pretty cool hands-on science exhibit center (which was sadly largely under rennovation when we were there -- late 2005).
Just remember to turn your cell off.
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Sol is one God almighty powerful AM radio station, forces even KGO in San Fran off the air nights in most other markets.
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I disagree.
I am in Seattle, where I used to listen to KGO (810AM) at night just about every night until they gutted their talk-show format for bullshit sports and other inane news drivel. In fact, in the 80's when I lived in the mountains of the Oregon Coast Range, I always tuned in KGO as soon as the sun set.
Re:This is news? (Score:5, Informative)
Sol is one God almighty powerful AM radio station, forces even KGO in San Fran off the air nights in most other markets.
The terms you are looking for are "propagation" and "ionosphere."
In fact, KGO reaches much further at night than in the daytime, not because the Sun is such a good AM radio source, but because of the ultraviolet radiation that comes from it NOT being there at night. This allows the D layer to dissipate, and the D layer is what absorbs the AM radio signal during the day. Without the D layer, and with a weaker E layer, the AM signal can refract off the F (combined F1 and F2) layer and bounce long distances.
And that improved propagation at night is why KGO has (or probably has, I'm not going to research it) lower power limits at night. They were, however, a clear channel station (three letter callsign tells you that) and thus had a protected frequency in the US. Now that clear channels have been done away with, there are smaller competitors, but still only one KGO.
Why don't you hear the Sun during the daytime on your AM radio? You do, a bit. The same ultraviolet radiation that creates the D layer also causes the AM signal from the Sun to be absorbed before it reaches you. The satellite services certainly do "hear the Sun" whenever the Sun is positioned behind the specific satellite that a dish is pointed at, and that is the cause of the solar outages that happen every year.
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Re:This is news? (Score:5, Informative)
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Solar? Thermal solar power (heat something using solar radiation), yes. Band-gap quantum solar power (aka solar power cells: get the photons to induce EMF in some conductor) is, presently, an absolute "no" as far as the environment goes: they are extremely expensive environmentally-wise to produce and recycle.
I've not seen any recent numbers that put the return on "cost" of PV solar to be any less than 200%, no matter how bad you try to make it look, unless you use proven-false lifetime numbers. PV solar just works.
Wind farms of small and medium scales are nice, but they will noticeably slow the local wind.
I've not seen any studies that indicate that. They are not high enough. They might slow surface wind within the wind farm itself, but most of the energy of wind is carried higher up, and taking away a little at the surface doesn't have any effect on nearby wind. It's not like people measure the en
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I know the impact of the towers in WV, they've been throwing them up all around where I grew up for the past decade and aren't stopping regardless of any environmental impact the farms themselves are having or their visual impact on the landscape -- What's even worse is when the sacrifices are made locally with little benefit from them, as nearer to PA/MD/VA the lines head OUT OF, not into the state. Elkins, WV suffers a scarring of its landscape to this day by JF Allen, an aggregate producer -- they scrape everything they can with zero attempt to reclaim the land. Up until the past few years, it still had a beautiful skyline if you looked the other direction. Now, that's been clear-cut and windmills erected. Nevermind the access and maintenance roads (2+ lanes for the tower trucks) or transmission lines! Score one for the environment!
So the only factual complaint you can come up with is you think they look ugly. I can see why they are trying to push them through over the irrational objections of the backward locals. Fuck energy policy, energy is ugly. I heard the same thing about power lines. People were arguing that their neighbors should have no power to the hospital because the lines were in their sight-lines. The alternative was for the government to spend a few million more dollars to pay to have the lines burred. And people
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A problem for satellites, too (Score:2)
wifi wallpaper (Score:2)
What ever happened to that wifi blocking wallpaper?
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A problem soon to be solved (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A problem soon to be solved (Score:5, Interesting)
NRAO Green Bank has several telescopes, a few of which are funded by organizations other than NRAO. Most notably, the 140 foot dish is currently funded by a project from MIT. There are also many other educational program that run at Green Bank that are not the GBT or VLBA, such as the small 40 foot dish which is available for school trips & amateur astronmers. The article is not clear about the fate of these other programs at NRAO Green Bank.
I grew up in West Virginia, and took a trip to Green Bank in 8th grade where our teacher had reserved time for us on the 40 foot dish. We were allowed into the control room, and were instructed on how to aim the dish at a celestial object that was in view during our visit. And that was separate from the liquid nitogren demonstration they had for us as well. For the most part, Green Bank is looked upon favorably by those in the community around it.
If you want to get to odd rules about NRAO Green Brank, how about the fact that there is a keep-out zone for standard gasoline engines near the 'scopes. Only diesel vehicles may be used on the observatory's grounds, due to radio emissions from spark plugs.
What's wrong with the installed hardwire? (Score:2)
Why is anyone even making an issue of this?
Why is a wireless network required at all? (Score:3)
The article doesn't explain why the tablet computers must have a network connection to be used to read digital textbooks. Is there any reason why the digital textbooks can't be loaded from a hardwired connection and then used when the tablets are offline?
The article also doesn't explain why every student in the entire school must have simultaneous internet access in order to take the online standardized tests. It should be possible to set a computer lab with enough computers to allow every student in a single grade to take the online standardized tests.
The article mentions that there is a highly restricted NSA facility near the school. I'm sure that the NSA knows how to limit signal leakage and radio frequency interference. Perhaps the NSA facility can find a solution to this problem that doesn't require a wireless network.
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Is there any reason why the digital textbooks can't be loaded from a hardwired connection and then used when the tablets are offline?
Because iPads don't have USB ports, ethernet ports, or any sort of removable storage whatsoever.
The only way to get those books onto the tablets would be to pack all of them into a car, drive to someplace far enough away that they CAN use wifi, and manually load the books onto each tablet one at a time.
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So don't use ipads they are a walled garden to begin with.
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1 - The original article doesn't mention the make and model of the tablet computers that the Pocohantas County schools are planning to use for electronic textbooks. It's possible that they will select Android over iOs
2 - iPads have either a 30-pin to USB connector or a Lightning to USB connector. The wired connection can be used to transfer files to and from the iPad.
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It's possible that they will select Android over iOs
Mod +5 funny.
Sorry but Androids aren't as sexy as iPads, and unless the principle and members of the schoolboard own Android tablets you're going to see yet another worthless waste of money in the school system rolling out devices with limited functionality in an attempt "improve school".
USB host, USB device, and SD reader for iPad (Score:3)
iPads don't have USB ports
Of course it does, and both [apple.com] genders [iphoneshop.net] at that.
or any sort of removable storage whatsoever
Come again [apple.com]?
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I have the camera connection kit for the ipad. It's not as useful as it might seem.
I'm a clumsy oaf, so my ipad tends to live in one of those griffin survivor cases (which really are tough, but the screen is less than lovely). As a result, the port is blocked, since griffin, in their less than infinite wisdom, based the 30 pin opening on the charger cable, Now, I could get one of those 30 pin extension cables, but every once in a while someone will remind you, in a negative review, that only the charging p
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I suspect that an iPad has the same capability, as it runs the same software.
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They have at least a USB port to be charging and syncing and you can buy external flash drives for them. Apple sells entire classroom solutions through their EDU reps.
Bad summary (Score:3)
The summary is restating the obvious but the actual article is about how the school district and state are moving to use ebooks and online testing so this school needs a lot of additional networking gear to keep everything wired only. They also mention how 802.11ad would work since it's signal range is too high to get through the atmosphere so the observatory doesn't care about it, but 802.11ad isn't readily available yet.
Lunar telescopes (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why the proposal to build a radio telescope array on the far side of the Moon has been around for so long. Having the moon between us and it is one helluva lot of dirt for blocking stray signals. Plus no atmosphere to get in the way. All you have to worry about then is reflection of Earthly signals off of other bodies in the solar system.
Too bad about the expense...
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Fortunately any lunar habitats will be either underground or so heavily shielded above ground that they might as well be below ground. With no atmosphere and no magnetosphere to speak of, the lunar surface is a radiation hell for biological things. Every time there's a solar flare, it gets bombarded with charged particles. The freedom loving freedom rights freedom people still won't interfere with the telescopes, since they and their pesky emissions will be buried.
Which brings up a mildly interesting poi
GBT Going Out of Business (Score:4, Interesting)
So? (Score:2)
Impossible to police (Score:2)
So many devices come with 802.11? and Bluetooth, it's not possible to control or police it. Some laptops have hardware switches for wireless, some have software swithches (thanks to airplane regulations), but many just leave it running. There's a lot of things which operate in the 2.4 GHz band, which the residents will not even think about, even if they are well-meaning and diligent. Thermostats, weather stations, cordless phones are some examples.
On the other hand, this place would be a haven for those peo
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In many cases laptops come with wireless on a separate card. Which can be removed/not fitted in the first place.
Moon Them (Score:2)
They should have built the telescope on the back side moon if they wanted quiet.
Red herring (Score:2)
I'm detecting a bit of a red herring in the article. Seems that the school is complaining about the cost of the required laptops in addition to the cost of the cat5 drops in the school rooms due to the shift to digital text books.
The cost of the laptops would have to be spent regardless of the school's location due to the shift to digital text books, so the only "additional" cost would be that of the cat5 drops in each room. However, the following quote from the article:
Green Bank Elementary/Middle has a strong and long-standing relationship with the scientific facility up the road - the NRAO installed Cat-5 cable throughout the school years ago, and Beaudet says the organization provides as much support as possible.
Rather strongly implies that the scho
I call BS (Score:2)
There's a WiFi transmitter within 100 miles of that dish, with nothing but plain air separating, at least 14 hours a day.
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I think the point is that the telescope is so sensitive that it's likely that no matter how much you crank down the dBs, it would still splatter too much.
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I think the point is that the telescope is so sensitive that it's likely that no matter how much you crank down the dBs, it would still splatter too much.
The problem would be as much in the fact that the remote units are probably going to be COTS and therefore not especially cranked down themselves. And travelling off-campus with the radio units still on.
RFI isn't the only case where nearby people can be a problem. The cryogenics lab at the University of Florida is (was?) located just about directly across the street from the football stadium, which is larger than many NFL stadiums. I was told that on game nights when the lights all went on and a 100+ thousa
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One watt is up near the top end of transmit power for Wi-Fi. Most Wi-Fi hardware transmits at a quarter watt or less so that when the end user couples it with a moderately directional antenna, they don't hit the maximum ERP.
But the point is well taken.
Re:Low power wifi? (Score:5, Interesting)
"here is a technological solution to the problem in the pipeline -802.11ad, a next-gen wireless standard that uses 60GHz frequencies to send and receive information, instead of the usual 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. At 60GHz, according to Beaudet, radio energy essentially just bounces off the atmosphere -meaning that the frequency is useless to the Green Bank Telescope in the first place. Signals to and from 802.11ad access points, then, would have no effect on the work taking place at the GBT, allowing for the best of both worlds. Unfortunately, 802.11ad is very much a technology of the future, not of the present -experts at an Interop New York panel last year predicted that devices using the standard wouldn't hit the market until 2014."
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When you said "very much a technology of the future" I was thinking 5+ years maybe, 2014 isn't too bad. But very interesting.
Re:Low power wifi? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is also no issue today.
Cat5 wires to every computer. Its not that big of a deal.
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Are they afraid people will trip over the wires? Can they not afford to string cable?
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Re:Low power wifi? (Score:5, Informative)
If conditions are right, I can have a contact with someone on CW running 5 watts, on the other side of the globe.
Such is the sensitivity of tuned circuits. For untuned interference, like your cell phone trying to interfere with your TV, rejection is great. But when you're specifically tuned to receive a frequency, you've got such a high sensitivity to that specific frequency, (and very high rejection of any other frequencies) that a cricket fart of a signal a long ways away can sound like a lightning strike on your house, if it's on the same frequency you're straining to hear.
They're a little better off than my CW example, being on a high frequency that's mainly line-of-sight, for which surrounding mountains would be a pretty effective shield, but still their receivers are just incredibly sensitive at their design frequencies. They just can't have anything anywhere near them or you will be all they can hear. It'd be like trying to listen to someone talking to you from a table at the other end of the restaurant, while you are seated right next to a table full of loud party animals. You'd have no chance.
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For untuned interference, like your cell phone trying to interfere with your TV, rejection is great.
Funny, but TVs are one of the most common places I hear the "brrzzzztt brrrrzzzzzt" from my GSM cellphone. When I have the ringer off, it's how I know I just got an SMS or someone tried to call me. Rejection not so hot, I think.
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Can they not use lower power wifi so that their signal does not extend that far beyond the school?
It's a great pity you can't network computers together with copper wire, isn't it?
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It's a great pity you can't network computers together with copper wire, isn't it?
They know that. Just it will cost more to wire the classrooms to spec. And no one wants to pick up the tab. The astronomers aren't obligated to and are starved for budget already. The education department similarly. Probably it'll be resolved by some private donor or company sponsor.
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Re:Boo Hoo (Score:4, Funny)
So some kids can't get Wi Fi. A vast majority of people around the world grew up without WiFi and of those most who went to school did so without WiFi.
[best Walter Brennan voice]
Yup sonny, I can remember back in the day having to use Wires!! Wires for pete sake. Imagine that!
Went by the name of CatFive, for some crazy reason. You had to plug them into the wall.
If you lost your wire you couldn't do anything. Had 8 wires in them, but only used 4 of them.
Durndest thing you ever did see.
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Went by the name of CatFive,
Yeah? Well, you young whippersnapper, you had luxury. Pure luxury. I remember the days we used cat three. Some fine times those were, since we moved up from that ten-base-two cable stuff.
And before that, twinax. And when you wanted to hook something up, you didn't just "plug it in", you had to drill a hole in the cable and install a "vampire" tap with a MAU and then a whole 15 wires at the same time.
Now, get off my damn NRAO quiet zone, you damn youngster, I'm tryin' to sleep.
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1000BaseT.
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Just let FedEx handle all your data transfer needs.
High latency, High bandwitdh. But given the road, fedex is a little slow. IPoAC would be better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers [wikipedia.org]
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IPoAC would be better. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers [wikipedia.org]
I always use AOL as my ISP, because they send their data on free-range birds, and them's pretty dang tasty if'n I do say so myself.
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When Greenbank was built this "high tech modern society" stuffe didn't exist. It's been there for about 50 years. People can choose not to live there. It was remote initially. People moved in.
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They would except flux capacitors would cause interference too.
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Re:No sympathy.... sorry. (Score:5, Interesting)
If they really need to use the frequencies that a technologically developed society uses all the time, then they should build their instruments in a remote enough location that regular use of technology would not be likely to interfere with them, instead of building it near enough to a town or city that a school could reasonably pose a threat just by using wifi.
Well now, aren't we the social experts all of a sudden? The National Radio Astronomy Quiet Zone, aka the NRAQZ, was setup in the 1950's as someone has already pointed out, and it is a natural bowl with 3 to 5 miles of real estate that is shielded from a lot of earthy interference because of the surrounding hills.
In 1950, there may have been some daytime AM radio in the area, which is not much of a problem because they don't listen to much below 300 mhz, 300 times the frequency of a Ma & Pa radio station. Its (the ma & pa radio) still there too.
Interesting side effect was that distant tv stations were forced to either be low band vhf, or if high band, more limited in power output. WTDV, on channel 5, about 80 Mhz, built their original facility on Fisher Hill, which was actually about 2 miles inside this designated areas borders, and was put there by the FCC's rules & regs when it was built in the later 50's because it was the highest point, and could not be moved more than 2 or 3 miles from where it a was at without being short-spaced to some other station. But was allowed to use the full 100kw sync tip peak power that any low band vhf can us as a maximum ERP.
WBOY, 17 miles north in Clarksburg and assigned to channel 12, was not allowed the high band vhf's max power of 330 kw ERP. but was limited to 100kw because of the slightly above 200Mhz frequency.
So, in the run up to the digital conversion, they wanted to recover all the low band stuff for use by Law Enforcement & because their assignment program was written by an idiot that wasn't aware of the NRAQZ, and proceeded to assign both stations new channels in the 56-58 range. That's in the high middle of the 700Mhz range. So I called the enforcement/compliance officer at Green Bank and asked him how much noise I could make on channel 58. 58 don't mean nothing so I had to translate to the actual frequency, which he plugged into his program and which said that the maximum power I (WDTV, I was the C.E. at the time) could send from 270 degrees true to Green Bank was 4.78 watts. Anything more than that he would have us shut down. I said send me a letter to that effect, and he did.
So I went to the NAB a couple months later and had a ball going around to the various transmitter makers showing that letter and asking for bids on a 4.78 watt transmitter. IOW, I had a ball poking fun at the commishes obvious stupidity.
Eventually, along with some heavy duty prompting by our Washington legal people, they saw fit to let us stay on our low band frequency. Quite a few of the tv broadcasters in the more mountainous areas have also stayed on our original channels.
As for de-funding or de-protecting the area from interference from the broadcasters, no way. 90% of what we know about the radio universe around us, came from Green Back, and to a certain extent, Aricebo. But while Aricebo can hear farther, it isn't nearly so steerable, nor as sharply focused as Green Bank's big dish. The new dish they built to replace the 300 meter that fell from rust & corrosion way back when, is performing at a level the old dish only dreamed about. It can move faster too in the event of a gamma ray burst, it can slew and be looking at the source of that burst in just a couple minutes. That facility is IMO a national treasure. FWIW, you have to take the bus into the place is your car has spark plugs. So everything that moves in that valley moves in a diesel bus, or by muscle powered bicycles.
Like Paul Harvey would say, and that's the rest of the story.
Cheers, Gene
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Then why on earth is there any civilian development inside of that bowl in the first place? No wifi in the school is one thing... what about nearby homes? What about interference caused by cell phones? What about interference caused by passing automo
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There is not any living quarters other than what may be a dorm for interns doing research, that I know of "inside the bowl", but Davis (I think that's the name) is only 2 or 3 miles away, south on the blacktop, and there are farms all around it.
I don't live there obviously, but have been down to play tourist a couple times. At my age now, 78 & diabetic, the walking would get me down quickly as the hip joints are about shot, and the better half has COPD, so I expect we have been there for the last time.
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So I went to the NAB a couple months later and had a ball going around to the various transmitter makers showing that letter and asking for bids on a 4.78 watt transmitter.
Kewl. QRP commercial television station. Do you QSL?
I think a lot of the "mountain area" VHF TV stations haven't been forced to digital is because, at least in Oregon, they are translators put up by a group of local residents so they could get ANY TV. Those groups are long gone and nobody has much money to buy new equipment, so the residents got their legislators to exempt them. I think.
Nice story. Thanks.
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So I went to the NAB a couple months later and had a ball going around to the various transmitter makers showing that letter and asking for bids on a 4.78 watt transmitter.
Kewl. QRP commercial television station. Do you QSL?
Not that I know of. Used to be fun back in the late 40's when you could pick up a Miami FL station running an Indian Head test pattern at 3 in the afternoon in rural Iowa. :)
I think a lot of the "mountain area" VHF TV stations haven't been forced to digital is because, at least in Oregon, they are translators put up by a group of local residents so they could get ANY TV. Those groups are long gone and nobody has much money to buy new equipment, so the residents got their legislators to exempt them. I think.
Nice story. Thanks.
Humm, quote parent doesm't quote it all, come on /., get with it!
Actually, translator rules are under a different section in 47CFR, and I believe they can stay by getting one of those digital to analog boxes they gave out coupons for back in 2008 so we didn't force everyone to buy a new tv when the old one was still working. We are doi
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I'm a radio astronomer who frequently uses the Parkes radio telescope in Australia, and I really wish we had an exclusion zone around it like the one around Green Bank. It's not really something you can put in place retrospectively, though: you need to write the exclusion zone into law when you build the telescope, and fight to keep it from then on. At least we've been smart enough to put an exclusion zone in place around the new ASKAP telescope in Western Australia.
I've got to say, though, that
90% of what we know about the radio universe around us, came from Green Back, and to a certain extent, Aricebo.
is a bit o
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Then as the use of those frequencies started to become prevalent, they should have either started change the way they look for things or else move.... or else buy out all of the surrounding land so that they *CAN* dictate the terms of technological operations on it.
If they don't own the nearby land, then I can see no reason why they should be able to dictate what goes on nearby when those activities are otherwise legitimate and very common elsewhere.
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Do you understand what the purpose of a radio telescope is? How it is tuned to receive frequencies emanating from many light years away? And the frequency of those em waves can't be changed unless you somehow go back in time and fundamentally alter the laws of physics?
Maybe I'm missing some obscure humor in your posts. Pray, do tell.
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But if commonplace technology in a nearby town is going to start interfering with that purpose, then it stands to reason that they should relocate.
They were there first. And it is not like the people in that area didn't know about the radio quiet zone and it suddenly snuck up on them while they were napping.
Wow, a small schoolhouse has to use wired networking. What a shame. Maybe they can pick up their cellphones and call their senators to complain. Oh wait, no they can't. They have to use a landline. I wonder why that is?
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Right... and why should you have to decrypt that dvd movie you bought to watch it on your Linux computer, when you could have chosen to buy an unencrypted dvd instead? Oh, wait...
You see? This isn't just about whether or not a school or community can use wifi. it's about arbitrarily creating restrictions around technology that define what kinds of technologies people, especially future generations, are going to be permitted to use simply so that *YOU* can continue your work. This issue is only go
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Really, it has much less to do with entitlement than it does with the fact that the people who ran that institution made a very poor judgement call when they agreed to allow development on their property in the first place. While it's one thing to bind someone to an agreement to not use particular technologies, it's quite another to expect the such bindings should somehow automatically apply to future generations, effectively restricting future technological progress.
But yes... if the institution has mo
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Ok, seriously. This is a SMALL piece of a HUGE country and was chosen specifically because it was A) almost 100% uninhabited B) Had high mountains so they wouldn't need as big of a quiet zone C) Out in the middle of fucking nowhere. Maybe the people that moved there and developed there should have thought about whether it was a sustainable place to develop.
I think we need a flying car analogy. Many towns and large cities are currently build near or around airports which all have "no fly zones" that extend i
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"Because all the quasars in the galaxy "
There are no quasars in this galaxy - fortunately for us.
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According to wikipedia, this dish was started in 1991 and and became operational in 2000. While I'll grant that wifi wasn't ubiquitous in the early part of that time frame, it was much more prevalent toward the end. Plus there were other kinds of radio technologies gaining common currency in that time frame (cell phones for example). It's a little disingenuous to hark back an additional thirty years in support of your argument, because this dish hadn't been built then.
Anyway, it seems to me it would have
Pork? -- kind of (Score:2)
The new telescope seemed sort of "porky" when I noticed its genesis at the time. The old telescope rusted out and fell over. Money was allocated for the new one really quickly because of (in my opinion) the pull of the two very senior senators from WV, especially Robert Byrd. That doesn't mean there wasn't scientific merit, just that with Byrd as senator there was no doubt that lots of millions of $$ would be sent there to rebuild. Which brings up a point I haven't seen yet -- this observatory must have