Posts by Richard

MOD spectrum under the spotlight

I don't trust Ofcom!

For a long time I've been concerned about the 430-440MHz secondary allocation to the Amateur Radio service and how long we will actually keep hold of it. According to the UK Defence Spectrum Consultation, It looks like the 430 - 450MHz spectrum is likely to be scrutinised sometime after 2012 which is extremeiy concerning.

I have the feeling that Ofcom have been rubbing their grubby little mitts together for a very long time, waiting to flog it off and make a pile of cash. I started to smell a rat when Ofcom decided to not charge for an Amateur Radio license, effectively taking away any lobbying potential that we had. We have already had Short Range Devices allocated spectrum in the band which have been causing interference to some fixed base repeater systems, but I can see this as a potential nail in the coffin of Amateur Radio use in the UHF spectrum. There has already been a furore over the 10GHz selloff, but the Radio Society of Great Britain seem to not be fighting the corner of the Amateur Radio fraternity and seem to be rolling over. I can see the same thing happening over 430-440MHz..

Looks like I for one won't be settting up for Moonbounce on 70cms...

Asus offers Brits Eee PC 900 battery swap plan

New eee girl

Bet she's got a nice Asus!

Reg readers split on Vista readiness

General MS OS Stability

My recent observations:

Had a laptop running XP and bought it purely because I could order it with XP - Office 2007 Powerpoint constantly crashed on exit.I never ended up with a fix for that.

I have an HP HX2490b running Windows Mobile 5.0 - that died last night - It won't charge or do anything. The OS for the device has gone Pete Tong totally and have taken the main battery out to allow the secondary battery to die and hopefully revert the PDA back to factory default and hopefully it will reboot...One day.

Having swapped my Windows MobileTreo 500v twice, it crashes if the keyboard lock is enabled and a meeting reminder comes up, often fails to send text messages that are longer than about 3x160 chars and I will sometimes pick it up and its crapped itself with no activity and I have to take the battery out to restart it.

I am really losing all faith in Microsoft products. The change in user interface when Office 2007 was relased caused me so much confusion in trying to do such simple tasks as print or import an Office 2003 presentation. I ended up behind on a schedule and had to revert to a machine that was running Office 2003 so that I could get my work done.

I understand that OS' have become more complex, but I am seriously questioning Microsoft products as viable and dependable business tools.

Ofcom starts planning for the London Olympics

70cm allocation

I've not been able to find anything concrete regarding allocation for the 2012 games on 70cm's. If anyone can point me to documentation, I'd be really interested in reading it.

Personally I think that Ofcom have been salivating over the 70cm band for a long time and because of lack of use and the value of the band, the lions share will end up allocated to other non-Amateur services.

Satanic car key traps 12 motorists in car park of horror

@Gecko FM

You don't need to go that far - a small 1W hand-held 70cm's radio will wipe out the whole car park of a motorway service area.

You don't even have to transmit on the frequency that these things use (433.920MHz) I've just conducted a quick test and if I transmit 100mW at 434.600 close to my car, the remote won't work. Basically it's down to crap design of the receivers (selectivity) and a lack of legislation.

434.600MHz is the input frequency for at least 15 Amateur repeaters in the UK. Repeaters take a signal broadcast on one frequency and rebroadcast on a different frequency to increase range.

Orange dismantles Bristol Tower of Doom

Re UMTS macrocells

Yes, I was going from the Sitefinder and assumed that the power figure was from the PA rather than actual radiated power into an isotrope. And I did slip up a little on my antenna gain calculations..Thanks for the correction.

Cheers

Richard