All of this hoopla about S band in the AMSAT bulletin board, which thankfully is blocked to me because comcast has chosen to blackball amsat.org (oh drat, the block just got removed ;-) ) caused me to do some talking, searching, thinking. We are definitely NOT at the end of this story.
I believe the Netherlands has lost 2400-2540. I am investigating with some help how universal this is. What I believe we are seeing is that like here, the licensed operators are supposed to be protected but what actually happens is that when the licensed operators interfere severely with the 802.11 use, the amateurs are summarily dismissed.
It is my opinion that we got bloody lazy. We took the ITU/IARU tables as found on the web and took them as gospel. We need to understand the actual reality as found on the ground. If we cede L band as an uplink, and we see a definite trend towards loss of 2400-2540 because of 802.11 across Europe, we are close to being between a rock and a hard place.
Thanks to Lee, a study that was pointed out called ARIA. This, commissioned by Paul Rinaldo at the League was EXACTLY what we are after. It is a study of the rise in noise floor at 2400 due to 802.11. Paul is a) helping me get the results and b) attending our symposium and giving a talk on frequencies.
Rick and I spent an hour in discussions with a very high ranking general officer at the Pentagon in a position to have an opinion worth listening to. His opinion is that our band at L band is NOT in danger from Galileo. I will not go into greater detail here and I will never put his remarks in a public record. But suffice it to say, his remarks have indeed caused me to go investigate this.
We did our TECHNICAL job in San Diego. We have NOT done our regulatory job and our political job and it has caused many to write me in private about existing situations. I am afraid we are about to be made to look as if we are knuckling under to pressure and it will have nothing to do with the pressure. It will have everything to do with this story getting out before we were ready to tell and had done all of our home work. If the serious impact of 802.11 resulting in loss of 2400 MHz uplink privileges in region 1 and 2 and 3 can be substantiated, then that is a fait d'accompli we must take into account. The loss of privilege, in every case I know of, results from BLOODY ATV users blocking 802.11 users. If we transmit and block, we can cause the same kind of problem. We need to understand how widespread this phenomenon is. We now can document it has happened in LU. I am given to understand by a European who should know that it is true also in the Netherlands. We must find out how widespread.
Given loss of 2400 as a fact (should we find this widespread and growing), I would risk using L band and 3400 instead rather than lose the ability to use our satellite altogether within a very short period following launch. Should we find this to be necessary, then we have a tough job to decide how, or whether to do 23cm, 9cm, or both and if we do both, can we put credible antennas on the spacecraft.
I believe Rinaldo is coming to tell us the cold hard facts of life. Be prepared to listen. I am also going to ask questions in the amsat-bb to try to elicit first hand knowledge of loss of this band from lurkers there.
Bob N4HY