unmanaged wrote:

A council spokesman said: "Residents are concerned about the visual impact of this resident's aerials, the radio interference they are experiencing and the nuisance this is causing them.

"Following legal advice, we're working with the resident and the relevant organisations involved to come to a solution that meets the needs of all parties."

This is bullshit.... Hams here in the US are required to take the steps to reduce and/or eliminate interference and I am sure it is the same in the UK.... Someone has a beef with someone and they bend the laws to take them out....

Right, because forcing people to have antennas closer to the ground causes less interference, and that's a statistically proven solution.

It's precisely the reason that broadcasters go to such lengths to build great towers to hurtle the signal out into the aether when they could just as easily dump 50,000 watts onto the deck at 125 feet above ground and nucleate little Fifi and every object in a 25 mile radius... (as an aside, I learned of a TV station that did exactly that, and thirty years later the chief engineer has cancer).

Someone give the poor schmuck a balloon and some Litz wire, please? Maybe some coax as well, supported by the balloon.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with someone who supported public safety communications: "People who don't understand communication systems shouldn't make decisions regarding how they are implemented or maintained." The net result of the decisions we were discussing left some law enforcement officers nervous because their employer had neglected to appropriately fund the radio maintenance group which subsequently prioritized available resources as effectively as they could resulting in officers carrying around portable radios with dead batteries. Fortunately, most of these officers were never far from the car radio. The irony of the decision was that it was made by a career law enforcement officer who didn't know much about radio.

I'm sure there's a parallel there to any number of professions there.. (IT, education, etc...)

Just like the DoD jumps on hams on the coasts for the interference to PAVE/PAWS radar... but why is it now a problem? I can not seem to find out why?

see link http://www.eham.net/articles/16786

This issue is largely a non-issue. The military has been a silent giant for a number of years, and despite initial attempts to claim all of the radio spectrum for itself, it has politely kept commercial interests out of the VHF/UHF bands by virtue of being a secondary user on those bands, with the notable exception of locations where it is the primary user of the bands. Just so happens that PAVE/PAWS is located in one of those bands and as such, bound by the conditions of licensure, amateurs must surrender to the interests of the military. Inconvient? Probably. Illegal? Not at all, the sign was on the door when you walked in. Granted, PAVE/PAWS is a cold war-esque RADAR system, but it is still arguably a component of that silent war machine that keeps us safe from nuclear attacks.

RE: I Will Live In A Very Quiet World (from Redditch Advertiser)