Amateur Radio and HR 607

The ARRL and AMSAT have recently pointed out that a bill before the House of Representatives would adversely affect frequencies used by amateur radio. The video below describes the ARRL's stance and what you can do. Scroll down for links to a template letter for your representative and the address to send it to.

A sample letter can be downloaded from:
ARRL Sample Letter

For those without Microsoft Word, the letter is copied below.

You can send your letter to the ARRL's Washington Representative:

John Chwat
Chwat & Co.
625 Slaters Lane
Suite 103
Alexandria, VA 22314

who will expedite its delivery to your representative.

=========================Copy of sample letter===============================

The Honorable ____________________
United States House of Representatives
______________ House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Representative ________:

As a voter in your district and as one of the nearly 700,000 federally licensed Amateur Radio operators across the nation, I ask that you oppose H.R. 607, the "Broadband for First Responders Act of 2011" in its current form. H.R. 607 was introduced by Congressman Peter King (R-NY) and referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.

H.R. 607 proposes to allocate the "D-Block" of frequencies (frequencies previously occupied by analog television) to be developed into an interoperable Public Safety wireless network. Earlier, it had been expected that the D-Block would be auctioned by the FCC for commercial use, but there is now substantial support for the allocation of the D-Block to Public Safety. H.R. 607 also provides for the reallocation of other spectrum for auction to commercial users, in order to offset the loss of revenue anticipated by the auction of the D-Block.

While I strongly support the work of the Public Safety officials who put their lives on the line for our safety, my opposition to the bill stems from the inclusion of the 420-440 MHz spectrum (the UHF 70-cm band) as part of a frequency swap and auction. Very little of this spectrum is allocated to Public Safety, and only in very limited areas. Rather, it is allocated to government radiolocation services on a primary basis, with Amateur Radio allocated on a secondary basis. The Federal government uses this band for critical defense purposes, including Pave Paws radars for detecting surface-launched missiles aimed at the United States, and for airborne radars used for drug interdiction. The Amateur Service carefully coordinates its uses of this band to insure compatibility. The two services have a very good record of sharing this spectrum successfully, putting it to good use for both military and civilian purposes in the national interest.

Amateur radio emergency communication relies heavily on our limited frequency allocations in the VHF and UHF radio bands. The loss of access to the 420-440 MHz spectrum would make it very difficult for us to maintain this capability and would mean we could no longer use numerous systems that have been constructed on our own time and at personal expense to provide this important communications support.

Amateur Radio operators across the country repeatedly demonstrate our commitment to public service and emergency communications. Through our work with FEMA and other Homeland Security activities, state and local Emergency Management offices, and numerous charitable relief agencies, volunteer Amateur Radio operators assist the first responders, doing so at no cost to the agencies we support. The role of the Amateur Radio Service as a partner to Public Safety in providing supporting public service and emergency communications necessitates our retention of full access to the entire 70-cm band.

As an Amateur, I understand and support that Public Safety officials must have the spectrum they need to do their jobs. However, it is not necessary to do so in the ill-conceived manner proposed in this bill. Other pending legislation provides for this important goal to be realized without the proposed reallocation of non-Public Safety spectrum for commercial auction that is included in H.R. 607. I urge you to oppose H.R. 607 in its current form. Thank you for your consideration.

[Your Name]
[Your Address]

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1. While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero. This is typically explained in the following way. While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare. That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2]. Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector. Its operation is in concept very sim

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:

Copasetic Flow

Search This Blog